


One Wheel Short

by YouAreInAComaWakeUp (Nikanaiko)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: It's a Wonderful Life cliche, M/M, canon-compliant until S6
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-04-19 00:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14224929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikanaiko/pseuds/YouAreInAComaWakeUp
Summary: Sometimes, I think the universe would be a lot better off without Lance McClain.





	1. This Time I Might Just Disappear

**Author's Note:**

> ~~Okay, first off, I cannot guarantee to anyone I'll finish this work. It is not my primary project, it's just something I've been working on in bits and pieces when I've been stressed out over the past month, and now that there's a finished chapter, I decided, "Eh, I might as well put it up somewhere." So if you're here from SoA [my other Klance fic in progress], don't worry, this isn't going to take its place. This is basically what I've written down when I've been too flipping mental to focus on anything I actually want to put effort into.~~
> 
> ~~But if you're here just to read something regardless of whether or not it's ever actually finished, then...you're in the right place. Have a seat and enjoy the show.~~
> 
> [March 13, 2019] EDIT: I am still primarily working on SoA at the moment, but I do plan on OFFICIALLY picking this fic up as soon as it's finished. Which will be happening soon. So you no longer have to worry about this fic not being finished unless I die or something equally sudden and jarring. I do, at this time, completely intend to finish this story.

Everything was a mess, and it was almost impossible to tell whether that was on purpose or not.

The flashing lights, the blaring alerts—it felt like nothing less than utter chaos.

It was anxiety-inducing at best and outright horrifying at worst.

But they all knew what to do. They all had their jobs.

And sometimes, their jobs were simply to be quiet and focus.

_ Oh, man, do  _ not _ make me regret shutting up and trusting you. _

There was a thud, a screech, the sound of scraping metal against hard stone. The lights in the shuttle flickered and died.

The screeching slowed to a stop.

For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of breathing, of quiet shudders of air echoing across the walls of the cockpit.

Then a single light flickered back on, and everything in sight glowed a dim, pale red.

A voice came on over the intercom.

[Simulation Cleared]

Hunk’s eyes widened. His jaw dropped.

He’d been so sure that was a failure, but...they did it.

They actually did it.

“Hooooly crow.” Hunk quickly unbuckled his seatbelt. “I thought we were done for. How did we even pull that off?”

Pidge unbuckled his own seatbelt and shrugged. “I guess we have to thank our pilot.”

Hunk looked at the pilot’s seat and smiled. Okay, so their pilot did scare him sometimes. Always scowling, often shaking, but he didn’t seem dangerous, just...quiet.

“Great work, Keith.”

Keith stood from his chair, eyes trained on the floor. Before he answered, the simulation shuttle’s door slid open.

“All right, Cadets!” Iverson slammed a hand down on the side of the doorway. “Roll out!”

The smile on Hunk’s face slid off like ice down a hot, angled pan. Iverson always seemed to be yelling. Even when they did things right. How much anger did one man have to have inside of him to be that loud all the time?

All three members of their team filed out of the shuttle and lined up in front of their classmates side by side, shoulder to shoulder.

Iverson began to pace in front of them.

“You three donkeys did well enough to pass, but don’t think that gets you off the hook.” He halted in place and turned toward the rest of their class. “Can anyone tell me what they did wrong?”

“The engineer dropped his tools in the main gearbox!” shouted one student.

Hunk furrowed his brow.  _ Come on, man, I was just trying not to throw up. _

“The comms spec. removed his safety harness!” shouted another.

Hunk almost rolled his eyes. Pidge was short. He couldn’t reach the radio without standing up. What else was he supposed to do?

“The pilot didn’t bring up the issues with the hydraulic stabilizer for nearly a full minute!” said a third.

Hunk’s eyes darted to Keith.

His hands were shaking again.

Whatever problems he’d been dealing with seemed to be worse than usual that day.

A vein pulsed in his temple. He opened his mouth.

And Hunk elbowed him in the arm before he even realized what he was doing.

They connected gazes. Briefly. Keith inhaled slowly through his nose. For a second, Hunk was sure that whatever energy he’d been about to expend yelling at Iverson was about to be turned on him instead.

But that didn’t happen. Keith simply released of the breath he’d taken, and Hunk turned his attention back to their instructor.

“—of any or  _ all _ of these problems would have resulted in a smoother, cleaner result in the simulation.” Iverson’s eye landed on Pidge, then on Hunk. “You may have passed…” Then to Keith. “But  _ don’t _ get  _ cocky. _ ”

 

* * *

“Ugh, I can’t believe how much of a creep Iverson is,” grumbled Hunk. “And Keith? Man, I thought he was going to punch Iverson in the neck for a second. I’m honestly kind of surprised he didn’t. Like, I always get the feeling he’s about two seconds from snapping, and Iverson’s not helping. Like, we passed, didn’t we? Why does he have to be like that? Why does he feel the need to be so prickly  _ all the time _ ? This is the Garrison, not boot camp.”

“He’s military,” grumbled Pidge, adjusting his headphones. “That’s how they are.”

“Well, your dad wasn’t like that, though, was he?”

Pidge sent Hunk a stern glare, gripping his headphones tight.

“Sorry,” hissed Hunk. “I didn’t mean it like… I mean…”

“I know,” said Pidge, almost in a grumble, lowering his headphones from his ears. “But if you’re going to keep bringing it up, I might regret telling you.”

“Sorry,” said Hunk again. “I seriously didn’t mean to, you know, rub salt in the wound, I just… I mean, do you ever really think you’re going to find him?”

“I can’t start doubting now,” said Pidge. “Not when they’re so close.” He looked up into the night sky and gripped his crossed ankles. “We just need to figure out what Voltron means. I know it has something to do with my father’s disappearance. I  _ know  _ it does.”

“I mean, sure,” said Hunk, shrugging and setting his hands on his knees. “Whatever Voltron is, it’s still gotta be important. Like, this is some weird stuff, but how do you  _ know _ it has to do with your dad disappearing?”

Pidge’s shoulders sank. He looked so...tiny. “Why else would they take him?”

Hunk followed Pidge’s gaze into the sky. There was still a chance...a huge chance...that Pidge’s dad disappeared for reasons entirely outside of alien activity, but Hunk wasn’t about to remind him of that. Not again.

“I guess you’re right,” he said instead, barely louder than a murmur.

Pidge shook his head and reached for his headphones again. “We need to focus on the radio chatter,” he muttered irritably. “You should hear how crazy it’s going tonight. There’s gotta be something—”

**_“Attention, students!”_ **

Hunk felt Pidge freeze beside him. They exchanged wide-eyed glances.

**_“We are on lockdown!”_ ** The voice from the loudspeakers was barely audible over the blaring of the sirens that accompanied it.  **_“Security situation Zulu-Niner. Repeat: All students are to remain in barracks until further notice.”_ **

Pidge whipped around to his monitor as if it must have held an explanation for the sudden security measures, but Hunk barely spared it a glance before looking skyward. When he did, the reason behind the lockdown became immediately apparent.

“Uh, Pidge?” He reached for Pidge’s shoulder so fast he almost slapped it and pointed his other hand at the red ball of fire rocketing through the atmosphere. “W-W-What is that? Is that a meteor, or…?”

Both of them knew the word he was hesitant to say.

Pidge reached for his binoculars and pointed them toward the stars to take a closer look at whatever was shooting toward the earth.

“From the looks of things?” Pidge handed the binoculars to Hunk. “I’m going with ‘or’.”

“No.” Hunk pushed the binoculars away and jumped to his feet. “No no no. No. I did  _ not _ sign up for an actual alien attack. I told you I’d help you find your dad, but this is  _ not _ what I had in mind. This is  _ actually, seriously dangerous. _ ”

The craft they’d spotted crashed into the earth with a loud, cacophonous boom, and Hunk covered his head instinctively, half-expecting to be hit by shrapnel.

“No way,” he said, throwing his hands down. “No. I’m going back to the barracks, where we’re supposed to be. Where it’s  _ safe _ .”

“Suit yourself,” said Pidge, gathering his equipment as fast as his little arms could manage, “but I  _ gotta _ see that ship.” He zipped up his bag and pulled it on. “You can come with me and see the most life-changing discovery mankind has made since electricity, or you can sneak back into your room and pretend tonight never happened.” He grinned manically. “But I’m going.”

He turned around and rushed past the solar panels, toward the doors.

Hunk sighed and began to run after him.

_ Oh, man. What did I agree to? _

 

* * *

Hunk and Pidge followed the Garrison ATVs from the crash site to a building Hunk didn’t even know existed. It seemed to be some kind of Garrison hospital, but it was small, and it was a fair distance away from the dormitories, hidden behind the rock formations Hunk and Pidge were watching from. Hunk couldn’t help feeling suspicious.

Why did they have something so perfect for responding to the crash of an alien craft?

Were they just prepared in case they ever encountered aliens?

Or had they encountered aliens before?

Hunk lowered Pidge’s binoculars. “So, uh, do you hear the aliens—?”

“Shh!”

“Sorry.” Hunk drummed his fingers on the binoculars’ cool metal surface. “But, like, this is kind of a big… We could be charged with treason for this, right? I mean, we’re kind of spying on government secrets.”

“Government secrets that have something to do with my father,” said Pidge, rapidly typing at his keyboard.

“But how do you know that, Pidge?” Hunk almost whined. “It could just be totally unrelated aliens, or maybe—”

Pidge turned his monitor around and pointed it toward Hunk. “This is how.”

Hunk squinted at the screen. It was probably the inside of the building they were looking at. He could guess that much. But what bothered him wasn’t the room he was looking at or the people in biohazard suits or even how Pidge managed to get the footage. No, what bothered Hunk was what was strapped to the hospital bed in the middle.

“Uh… That guy looks awfully human,” said Hunk, raising an eyebrow. “Why do they have a human strapped down like that?”

“That’s not just any human." Pidge dropped his hand to his monitor. “That’s Takashi Shirogane. Better known as Shiro.” His eyes met Hunk’s. “He was the pilot on the Kerberos mission.”

“Wait.” Hunk held up his hands, palm out. “ _ The _ Kerberos mission? As in the one your dad was on?”

“Exactly,” said Pidge. “But…” He looked down at the screen, brow knitting. “If Shiro’s here...then where’s my dad?”

For the first time that night, Hunk’s eyes softened sympathetically.

This was a proven lead, and even if Pidge’s father wasn’t there, someone who would know what happened to him was. Maybe the only person in the universe who did. And if Pidge’s father was...wasn’t going to come home...then at least Pidge could get some closure.

“Okay.” Hunk scooted closer on his knees. “What do I have to do?”

Pidge unplugged his headphones and turned up the volume on the monitor’s speakers. A set of voices came through, and Hunk immediately recognized Iverson’s among them.

“Calm down, Shiro. We just need to keep you quarantined until we run some tests on you.”

“You’re not listening to me!” Shiro lurched forward, struggling against the straps that kept him bound to the bed. “They destroy worlds! Aliens are coming!”

Hunk shuddered and grabbed his elbows. “Dude, this is  _ creepy. _ They’re treating him like he’s not even a person.”

Pidge pressed a finger to his lips, gaze unmoving from the screen.

“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?” asked Iverson, absolutely no mind paid to what Shiro was saying.

“I don’t know!” snapped Shiro. “Months?  _ Years? _ ” He turned his head, eyes frantic and wild as he searched the room for anyone who might listen. No one did. “Look, there’s no time! Aliens are coming for a weapon. They’re probably on their way. They’ll  _ destroy us. _ We have to find Voltron!”

Hunk’s eyes widened, and he and Pidge exchanged expressions.

“Voltron,” hissed Pidge.

“I guess you were right,” murmured Hunk. “It  _ does _ have something to do with the Kerberos mission.”

_ But what? _

“Sir, take a look at this.” One of the other Garrison officials—someone whose voice Hunk couldn’t recognize—loomed down over Shiro’s right arm. Hunk hadn’t seen it before, but the second the Garrison operative drew attention to it, he noticed that the arm wasn’t really arm-colored. It was tarnished, silvery. Like it was made of metal.

“It appears his arm has been replaced with a cyborg prosthetic.”

The suit that must have been Iverson turned its mask toward the arm. “Put him under until we know what that thing can—”

“No!” begged Shiro, struggling even more vehemently against his bonds. It gave Hunk chills even watching it happen on a screen half a mile away. “No, don’t put me under! There’s no time!”

“They didn’t ask about the rest of the crew,” murmured Pidge from beside Hunk’s ear.

“I told you Iverson was a creep,” said Hunk. “This gives me chills. I feel like an accomplice. This… This is wrong.”

Pidge reached for his bag. “We have to get him out.”

“Okay, yes?” agreed Hunk warily. “But here’s the thing:  _ How? _ ” He climbed to his feet and gestured down the edge of the cliff. “Do you see how many guards there are down there? How are we supposed to get past all of them? There’s  _ no way— _ ”

Mid-sentence, Hunk screamed and threw his arms over his head, startled by a series of loud, echoing explosions that rumbled across the desert valley. He dropped to his knees and shuffled behind Pidge, as if his small body would be any protection from whatever had caused so much chaos.

“Is that the aliens?!” he asked, gripping Pidge’s shoulders. “A-Are they— Is that the aliens? Are they here? They got here so quick!”

Pidge, calm in stark contrast to Hunk’s panic, crawled toward the edge of the natural platform they were sitting on and peered down the edge. “No, Hunk, that wasn’t aliens. That was a distraction. Look.”

Hunk followed Pidge’s gaze into the valley below, and he froze, eyes narrowed.  _ Hold on… _

“The Garrison’s heading toward the blast and he’s sneaking in from the other side! This is our chance to—”

“Wait, Pidge.” Hunk grabbed Pidge’s shoulder again. “Do you recognize that coat? And the hair?”

Pidge turned toward him. “What are you talking about?”

“We’ve been stuck behind the same person every single time we’ve been tested on the simulator for the past semester and a half.” Hunk pointed down the rocks. “You can’t tell me that’s  _ not  _ the same guy.”

He exchanged glances with Pidge, and Pidge’s eyes widened behind his glasses.

“...It can’t be.” He stood up fast. “Why would  _ he  _ be out here?”

“Well, why are  _ we _ out here?” asked Hunk.

Pidge hurriedly gathered his things. “The only way we’ll know for sure is if we help him, right?”

What few of the Garrison guards hadn’t left to investigate the blast were littered around the crash site like empty soda cans. Whoever had broken in had done quite the number on them. All Hunk and Pidge had to do was follow the trail of unconscious operatives.

At the end of the hospital hall was a bright, white room, and in that room, helping Shiro off of his hospital bed, was a very familiar face.

“I knew it!”

Keith froze, eyes wide. “...Hunk?” His brow furrowed. “ _ Pidge? _ ”

“Uh, hi,” said Pidge from behind Hunk’s arm.

Keith stared incredulously. “What… What are you—”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Hunk, rushing to Keith’s side. “No time for questions. We’re getting Shiro out of here.” He turned around and kneeled low to the ground. “Go ahead and load him onto my back.”

When Keith didn’t respond, Hunk looked over his shoulder. “Look, I can carry him a lot faster than you can, and I’d really like to get out of here, like,  _ yesterday. _ ”

Keith narrowed his eyes. “Why are you helping me?”

“Who cares?!” snapped Hunk. “Let’s just go!”

 

* * *

By the following morning, Hunk was convinced of two things.

One, Keith was absolutely insane. Driving off the edge of a cliff while trying to escape government officials and then leading friends to a bizarre shack in the middle of the desert wasn’t something sane people did.

And two, judging by the state of the corkboard in said bizarre shack in the desert, Keith was in  _ way _ over his head.

“What have you been working on?” asked Shiro, utterly incredulous, echoing Hunk's thoughts.

“It’s a long story, but…” Keith turned toward Shiro. “After you disappeared, I started having some...issues.” He ran his fingers over a thread on his chart. “Anger issues. I...came close to attacking my instructors more than once. I think if one more thing went wrong, or...or if Hunk and Pidge weren't there to stop me in time, I think I would have gotten expelled a long time ago.”

Pidge and Hunk exchanged a glance. Hunk wasn’t exactly surprised, but it was one thing to be  _ pretty _ sure he kept Keith from knocking someone’s lights out and something else entirely to hear it from the man himself.

“But I still knew that something was wrong,” said Keith, narrowing his eyes. “That something wasn't right about what they said about the Kerberos mission, so I started sneaking around, trying to find answers.”

Hunk looked at Pidge through the corner of his eye. That sounded familiar.

“There was this...energy,” said Keith. “Telling me to search. The more I followed it, the more I found.” He gestured toward photos he’d taken and printed out. “This outcropping with giant boulders, these caves... Markings that all tell slightly different stories about a blue lion… But they all shared clues leading to some...arrival that happened last night." He turned toward Shiro. "Then you showed up.”

“You did all of this, what, between classes?” Pidge crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Hunk and I have been doing basically the same thing with better technology, and we haven’t found half as much.”

“Yeah, but we never went past the roof,” said Hunk, gesturing nervously. “We’ve been using signals and frequencies and radio chatter. Keith’s been out here in the middle of it.” He turned toward Keith and narrowed his eyes. “How— How did you never get caught? What are you, some kind of secret agent? Do you have some kind of hidden gadget closet in this crazy shack of yours? A series of underground tunnels or something? How'd you pull it off?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” said Keith, shrugging.

“If anyone here is lucky, it’s me,” said Shiro. “I should be thanking you all for getting me out. If you hadn’t…”

“We know,” said Pidge. “Hunk and I heard you told Iverson. What do you know, exactly?”

“Not much,” admitted Shiro. “Just bits and pieces. Nothing specific.”

“Aside from aliens looking for a weapon,” said Pidge.

“Weapon.” Hunk frowned. “ _ Voltron. _ Wait, Pidge, hold on, do you think…?”

“Do I think what?”

Hunk turned around and reached for Pidge’s bag. He dug through it, pulling out notebooks and loose pieces of paper until he found one spiral notebook in particular. “Keith, I think we might have a lead on that energy you were talking about.”

“Lead?” Keith walked away from his corkboard and approached Hunk’s shoulder. “What lead?”

“Well, you know how everybody in this room has been looking for aliens?” Hunk opened the notebook and began flipping through pages. “Well, while Pidge and I were listening to radio chatter, there was this series of numbers that kept showing up, and I thought it sounded kind of like a Fraunhofer line, so I graphed it ages ago, and if the aliens are looking for a weapon, and the weapon is Voltron, and it’s here on Earth? Then—” He turned the notebook around and showed Keith. “It just occurred to me that this might be, you know, it. The Voltron thingy. And I might actually be able to build something to track it.”

Keith’s brow furrowed and he snatched the notebook out of Hunk’s hand. “Give me that.”

He glared down at the graph, then turned around and raised it to his corkboard, comparing it to one of the photographs he’d taken, a picture of canyon scenery, which lined up shockingly perfect against the line on the graph.

Hunk squinted. “Okay, that’s just not natural.”

“Maybe it isn’t,” said Pidge, mirroring his frown. “Maybe whatever left the Voltron here carved out the scenery to remind them where it was. Like a street sign. Or...crop circles.”

Shiro shrugged. “Well, it’s the best lead we’ve got. I say we go for it.”

 

* * *

Hunk lifted his head from his makeshift “Voltron Geiger-counter” and his mouth fell open.

Every inch of the inside of the cave was absolutely covered in carvings, some of people, some of what seemed to be an unidentifiable language, some of symbols that could have represented anything from the sun to alien crafts… And the most notable of them the lions Hunk had seen on Keith’s corkboard.

The sound of footsteps following Hunk’s own echoed across the cave walls, and Hunk turned his attention back to the reader in his hands.

“It seems like whatever we’re picking up is coming from right below us,” said Hunk, turning toward Keith. “How deep do these caves go?”

“Pretty deep,” said Keith, “but I haven’t found any tunnels that lead underground.”

“Maybe there’s some kind of bubble beneath us,” said Pidge, frowning at the floor. “Like an aqueduct or something.”

“Great,” deadpanned Hunk. “So how do we get to it?”

“We could tunnel down,” suggested Keith.

“What, do you have some kind of drill digger hidden in that little shack of yours?” asked Hunk.

“Maybe we could use a sledgehammer,” offered Pidge.

“I don’t have one of those, either,” said Keith, crossing his arms.

“So we buy one,” said Pidge. “You’ve got a bike. We drive to the city, get one from the hardware store, drive back.”

“Uh, quick question about that,” said Hunk. “Do any of us have money on us? Like, enough for a sledgehammer?”

“I bet Keith could steal one,” said Pidge. “He seems to know his way around the law.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” grumbled Hunk.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea, Pidge,” said Keith, sounding just as bitter. “Let me just sneak one out under my coat.”

“I don’t see you coming up with any better ideas,” snapped Pidge.

“Maybe we should just leave it,” suggested Hunk, holding up his hands. “I mean, maybe the aliens won’t find it. It’s probably been down here for centuries. Maybe longer. If they haven’t found it yet, who’s to say they will? Maybe this is just a really good hiding place and we should leave it where it is.”

“What do you think, Shiro?” asked Keith.

Shiro didn’t respond.

Hunk looked over his shoulder. “Shiro?”

He was there. Only a few feet away. He simply wasn’t responding to his name. He seemed...transfixed by one of the carvings. One of the star-like symbols Hunk had seen before.

“Okay, this is sorta creepy,” said Hunk, hunching his shoulders. “I saw an old movie like this once, with a witch, and, like, the guy was in a basement, and he wouldn’t turn around, and—”

“Shut up.” Keith pushed past Hunk and approached Shiro from behind, his hand raised.

“Uh, Keith?” whispered Hunk. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Keith paid him no mind. He dropped his hand on Shiro’s shoulder, and the next few seconds passed almost too rapidly to keep up.

Shiro whipped around aggressively, eyes wide, arm raised.

Hunk grabbed Keith by his elbow and yanked him back, instinctively pulling him away from the danger.

Before Shiro could strike, his arm began to glow purple, and he fell to his knees with a pained cry.

“Shiro!” Keith yanked himself free from Hunk’s grip and kneeled in front of Shiro, reaching for his shoulders. “Shiro, what’s wrong? What can I do? How—”

“I’m…” Shiro grunted through bared teeth, and an unnerving wave of black shadow tore away from his hand like a laser breaking free of its path. “I-I’m fine.” Shiro swallowed hard and lifted his head. “I’m fine,” he repeated.

“Are you sure?” asked Keith, leaning closer.

“Yeah,” said Shiro. He flexed the fingers of his right arm and stood slowly, his eyes on the ground beneath Hunk’s feet. “I… I think I know how to get down there.” He closed his hand into a tight fist, and his entire arm glowed brighter, shining a brilliant, fluorescent violet glow against the walls of the cave.

“Are you sure?” asked Keith, climbing cautiously to his feet.

Shiro’s expression darkened. “Pretty sure.” He lifted his head and looked at the rest of their group. “You’re going to want to stand back, though.”

Hunk didn’t need to be told twice. He grabbed Pidge’s arm and took a step back, pulling Pidge along with him.

Shiro nodded at Keith, who took a step back as well.

Then he looked at the floor.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, reeled his arm back, and with a cry of effort that echoed down the cave like an explosion, he brought his fist down and punched the stone floor.

It cracked like an egg.

And no one had been standing back far enough.

Sharp stones flew past Hunk’s head as he fell through the cave floor, screaming at the top of his lungs. Pidge clinging onto his neck nearly tight enough to choke him. They slid down the incline beneath them, water seemingly flowing in from nowhere, turning the chute into what could have been a fun natural waterslide if it hadn’t been absolutely terrifying.

The shallow water at the bottom did little to soften their fall, and Hunk hit the ground beneath the water hard. He groaned and lifted his head slowly, first to check on Pidge—who was fine—then to search for Shiro and Keith.

And he found them.

But he also found something else.

Something impossible to miss.

“Oh...my god.”

The blue lion—the very one Keith the cave markings illustrated—stared at them, enormous, from the opposite side of a bizarrely solid-looking blue light.

“Is this it?” breathed Pidge by Hunk’s ear. “Is this the Voltron?”

“It...must be,” said Shiro, pushing off the floor with a no-longer-glowing hand.

Keith stood from the shallow pond and began to walk toward the lion. Hunk almost envied his fearlessness.

Pidge and Shiro followed a fair distance behind.

Hunk had no choice but to go with them.

He’d barely stood up before he was struck with a realization, something rather urgent.

“Does anyone else see the problem with this?” asked Hunk, watching Keith press his hands to the glowing, blue forcefield.

“What problem?” asked Shiro.

“You know,” said Hunk, “the blatantly obvious problem? The one that’s staring us all in the face? The issue with finding a giant, metal weapon that we’re supposed to be protecting that’s, like, a hundred times our size and weight and deep underground?”

Keith tilted his head back to look at the lion looming over him. “I think I do,” he said softly.

He turned around, brow furrowed, one hand still pressed to the forcefield.

“Now that we found it...what are we supposed to do with it?”

 

* * *

"Shiro, I gotta talk to you about something."

"Um... Okay."

Lance waited for the door to close behind him before he gave Shiro his full attention.

"I don't know if this party thing is a good idea."

Shiro furrowed his brow. "Is this because of Lotor?"

"Well, yeah," said Lance warily. "But it's other stuff, too."

Shiro crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. "Like?"

"First off, the last time we had a party, I kind of almost died?" Lance grimaced. "So, like, excuse me for being just a little bit wary."

"This is different," said Shiro. "There's going to be better security. There'll be a guest list, guards, people aren't just going to be coming and going as they please. They have to get through security."

"Yeah," said Lance, "but that's where the whole Lotor thing starts to be an issue. How do we know the people on the guest list aren't gonna, you know, set off a bomb?" He furrowed his brow. "Again."

Shiro uncrossed his arms and let them fall to his sides, balled into fists. "I don't know what's going on with you regarding Lotor, but whatever it is, you need to get over it."

"What's going on with me?" Lance narrowed his eyes. "Are you kidding me? Do you know how many times this guy nearly killed us? Because it was a lot. You weren't here for all of them, but trust me, Lotor did  _ not _ have our best interests at heart."

"People change," snapped Shiro.

Lance scoffed and crossed his arms. "Yeah," he mumbled. "No kidding."

A loud whack landed just inches from Lance's ear, and he lifted his head, eyes wide, to find Shiro scowling just inches from his face.

"This is not—!"

Shiro cut himself off, and his glare softened into worry.

Lance, who just noticed he was holding his breath, breathed, and he dropped his tensed shoulders from where he'd raised them to his ears.

"Lance, I..." Shiro pulled his fist back and he looked down at it, then met Lance's eyes.

Lance managed a smile, hoping Shiro wouldn't notice the way he was shaking. "Don't... Don't worry about it." He stood up straight and pushed away from the wall he'd been backed into. "You've been under a lot of stress lately. I get it."

"That doesn't make it okay," said Shiro. "I..." He took a step back.

"It's fine," said Lance. "I mean it. Don't worry about it. I just...wanted to express some concerns I had, and I did." He shrugged. "You're our leader. You make the calls."

"I..." Shiro looked down at the floor. "I guess."

"Yeah." Lance pursed his lips, and his eyes darted toward the door. "I'll, uh, leave you alone now." He chewed his lip for a brief moment. "I mean, if you want to talk about anything..."

Shiro sighed heavily.

"Right." Lance smiled tiredly. “See you later.”

He left the room, and the door closed behind him with a soft hiss.

Lance didn’t get so much as a chance to breathe before a pair of voices Lance never heard apart anymore came bustling down the hall.

Deciding he really didn’t want to deal with Lotor and Allura at the moment, Lance turned, only to be stopped.

“Oh, Lance! I have some news I think you’ll like.”

Lance’s shoulders went rigid again. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and turned around, a false smile on his face. “Oh, yeah? What news would that be, Princess?”

Allura grinned, more in Lotor’s direction than his. “Prince—Sorry— _ Emperor _ Lotor and I were discussing wardrobe for the event on Covew, and he’s been able to pull some strings, and we can expect replicas of formal Altean armor to be custom made by the end of the movement.” She finally looked Lance in the eye. “My father used to wear such armor long ago. It’s going to be exciting to see it worn again.”

“I doubt the replica will be exact,” said Lotor, “but the style should be similar. It will be a breath of fresh air to see a revival of Altea’s distinct style.”

Lance shot Lotor a brief, skeptical frown and shoved his hands into his pockets. “What’s wrong with wearing our Paladin armor?”

“Well, nothing’s  _ wrong _ with it, per se,” said Allura, clasping her hands. “But it’s not exactly  _ fancy. _ And if you knew what the Covewish are like, particularly their social elite, then you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in something like  _ that  _ at such a grand gathering. I’m surprised you aren’t more excited. You've shown so much interest in fashion in the past. I would have thought you would have jumped at the chance to wear something new.”

Lance narrowed his eyes. He so desperately wanted to say,  _ You know why, Princess,  _ but he knew when he was outnumbered. “I just don’t think there’s any reason to go through so much trouble when our Paladin armor is  _ just fine. _ ”

“It won’t be any trouble at all,” said Lotor. His dignified tone did little more than to tick Lance off. He always seemed so above it all.

“Right.” Lance scowled and turned his attention back to Allura. “Anyway, Princess, have you seen Coran?”

“Not lately, no,” said Allura. “But you might find him with the cryo pods. I heard him say something earlier about cleaning them today.”

“Great.” Lance walked past her. “Thanks.”

He wove through the corridors, hands still in his pockets, eyes on the floor as he made his way toward the med bay.

He passed Pidge and Hunk halfway down the hall, talking about something that went miles over Lance’s head, as usual. They were deep, deep in conversation. They probably hadn't even noticed him.

Sometimes, Lance wished he was smarter, just so he would be able to talk to them, to keep up with whatever they were discussing.

As Lance passed Pidge and Hunk and caught snippets like “inductive” and “Geissler tubes”, he realized just how frequent those times had become.

The doors to the med bay opened, and Lance stepped inside.

Nothing but pods. No Coran in sight.

Wearily, Lance walked to one of the pods and slumped against it.

Finding Coran would require more energy than he had.

So he simply...didn’t bother.

 

* * *

“What?” Pidge arched an eyebrow. “Was she not your type?”

Lance turned around and looked over his shoulder. He hadn’t even been paying attention to the coach driver. Once Pidge had pointed her out, Lance had to admit, she was pretty. All the Covewish he’d seen so far were, with their pearly blue skin and remarkably long eyelashes.

But Lance had been distracted.

He’d been distracted for most of the week.

“I guess I’m just focused on the mission,” said Lance, turning his eyes back to the capitol doors.

“What mission?” grumbled Pidge. “Important hosts or not, this is just a party.”

“That doesn’t make it any less dangerous,” said Lance. “I don’t like being so far away from the Castle or the Lions.”

“You just don’t like Lotor,” accused Hunk.

“Have you ever thought that there might be a reason for that?” demanded Lance. “Like, you know, the fact that he’s the  _ leader of the empire we’ve spent our entire lives away from Earth fighting? _ Or what about the fact that we’re currently standing in front of a big government building belonging to a society of people who surrendered to the Galra without even putting up a fight?”

“The Covewish have a reputation for wisdom and patience that goes unparalleled,” said Coran, tugging at the jacket of his suit, another gift from Lotor. “Chances are they foresaw the destruction of their planet early on and did what was necessary to survive.” He gave Lance a pointed look from the corner of his eye. “As someone who lost his planet, I can’t say I don’t sympathize.”

“Lance.” Allura’s calm voice mirrored Coran’s. “I know you’re still wary, but Lotor has shown nothing but sincere cooperation since his interference on Naxzela. We need to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Lance narrowed his eyes and looked past Allura. “Shiro, what do you think of all this?”

Shiro sent him a scowl. “You already know my opinion, Lance.”

Before Lance could respond, the double doors at the front of the capitol opened wide, revealing Lotor winged by two guards, dressed in his best Galra finery.

“Loyal friends.” Lotor descended the steps, arms outstretched gracefully, palms up, as if he planned on stooping low enough to pull the team into a group hug. “Welcome to Covew. It is my greatest pleasure to be able to return here on a quest for peace rather than conquest. That being said…” Lotor turned and gestured toward the double doors behind them, which, rather than being empty, housed five remarkably elegant-looking women. They were tall and thin, each dressed in matching white and lavender clothing that looked not unlike Earth’s hanfu, but more...alien, and with long strings of what seemed to be silver coins dangling from the ends of their upper garments.

“Allow me the pleasure of introducing you to the Covewish Oligarchy.”

 

* * *

It really wasn’t much more than a party.

And Lance wasn’t in much of a partying mood.

He eyed the guests from the edge of the room, absently swirling his drink.

_ I bet I look like Keith right now, _ he mused, gripping his blue stone cup.  _ Keeping to myself, scowling… _

Scowling from a distance had its advantages, however.

Despite everything Shiro had said about the level of security, Lance noticed a great many people coming and going. The event was clearly open to the general public, judging by the vastly differing states of dress from one person to the next, and while it was great that the oligarchy had opened their doors to their citizens, it also meant that they were letting in strangers, people they couldn’t verify as trustworthy. Lance wasn't even convinced the oligarchy itself was trustworthy, of course, and that was even harder to prove.

No one else seemed worried, though. Not even Shiro, which was odd for him. At least, for the Shiro Lance thought he knew, who seemed farther and farther away from the Shiro they found floating in space with every passing day.

He was just...chatting with Lotor. Like there was no reason for anyone to be nervous.

Allura was talking with a couple of members of the oligarchy.

Hunk was playing with a few of the children Lance had seen running around.

And Pidge… Pidge seemed more interested in the food than anything else. Lance would have expected that more from Hunk, but Pidge seemed to be in it for the quiet rather than for the food itself.

A flash of very fast-moving blue and white caught Lance’s attention, and his eyes instinctively darted toward it, searching for a threat, a weapon, some kind of danger.

Anything but a little girl.

Lance frowned curiously, following the girl with his gaze until she disappeared into an unlit corridor, running as fast as her legs could carry her, tears in her moon-like eyes.

She had looked absolutely terrified, as if she was being chased. Lance waited, eyes on the corridor, worried that someone would follow, but no one did. In fact, it seemed that no one had seen the girl but Lance, as if she were a ghost slipping away into the night.

Worried, Lance cut through the crowd, dropping his glass onto a passing server's tray, and he followed the girl into the corridor.

The corridor, though dim, was not as completely unlit as Lance had thought from the much brighter ballroom.

Every inch of the walls was elaborately decorated, covered in ornate murals. They seemed to tell stories, though of what, Lance had no idea. He saw Covewish people standing in pale blue crowds over fields of flowers that reminded Lance of Earth’s dandelions. Each of the Covews’ heads was turned toward the night sky, which gleamed with stars that glowed as much in the real world as they did in the murals, lighting Lance’s way.

He ran past giant depictions of herds of white, six-legged, horse-like creatures, of what seemed to be clocks, each reading the same time (though Lance couldn’t understand what that time was), of trees with white, rectangular leaves, of flocks of long-necked birds, of glowing comets with long tails, of silver bells and strings of coins and glittering locks held between Covewish couples’ hands. He ran past door after door, hoping that the girl he’d seen hadn’t gone into any of them, hoping that she would be somewhere along the corridor.

And at the very end of the corridor, illuminated by a small, decorative fountain filled with a liquid that glowed a bright, brilliant white, sat the girl Lance had been looking for. She had draped herself over the stone wall of the fountain's basin. She'd hidden her face in her pale, blue arms. Her shoulders trembled with silent tears, and all of Lance’s worries from before he’d seen the girl disappeared from his mind.

Not a whole lot else seemed to matter to Lance when he stood in front of a crying child.

“Hey—”

The girl rose her head and whipped around, her pale eyes wide, and she scooted backward frantically, desperate to get away from Lance by whatever means necessary.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Lance quickly dropped to one knee and held up both hands in a peaceable gesture. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The girl raised her shoulders, clearly unconvinced. She was tiny, comparable to a human child perhaps six or seven years old. Lance's niece had probably grown to about the same age since he’d left Earth. It was a melancholy thought.

“Honest,” insisted Lance. “Look.” He reached for his leg and brought out his Bayard.

He held it out to the girl in its neutral appearance, and she pressed herself against the wall of the fountain, hugging her knees to her chest.

“I’m a Paladin of Voltron,” explained Lance, soft and reassuring. “I help people who are sad or scared, just like you.”

The girl didn’t respond. She barely even moved, save for blinking her long, Covewish eyelashes and sending more tears rolling down her cheeks.

Lance thought for a moment, then smiled in a way he hoped was comforting and trustworthy. “Hey, want to see something super cool?”

Still, the girl remained silent, but there was a subtle change in her expression, one that was barely noticeable. She seemed...curious.

Lance turned his Bayard in his hand, shifted it into its shotgun-like form, and pointed it at the ceiling.

When Lance fired, in place of the usual burning laser, a stream of red sparks shot into the air. They hit the ceiling harmlessly and pushed out in all directions, sending a rain of glittering crimson sparkles floating slowly down all around them.

The Covewish girl tilted her head up and watched the glimmering effect until it faded, and though she seemed far from awestruck, she seemed somewhat calmed. Her grip on her knees had relaxed, and her shoulders didn’t seem to shake quite as much.

“See?” whispered Lance. “What kind of a bad guy would take the time to learn how to do that, huh?” He put his Bayard away and sat on his heels in front of the girl. “Now, do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

The girl looked at her knees.

“Okay,” said Lance gently. “That’s fine. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. So how about this instead?” He offered his hand. “I keep you safe while we look for someone who  _ can _ help you. Sound good?”

The girl lifted her head, but only halfway. Just enough to be able to see Lance's hand.

Then, slowly, her own tiny hand quivering, she reached for it.

Lance let out a breath of relief. “Okay,” he whispered, standing slowly. “Let’s go find your family.”

The girl began to stand as well, only to wobble and drop back to the floor, clearly favoring her left foot over her right.

“Are you okay?” asked Lance, dropping to his knee. “Did you twist your ankle or something?”

The girl sniffed.

Lance frowned thoughtfully. It had already been a lot of work to convince the girl just to take his hand, but he could think of no other option. At the very least, it couldn’t hurt to ask. “Do you want me to carry you?”

The girl lifted her head, eyes wide, and for a moment, Lance was worried that he’d scared her back to step one, but rather than pull away, the girl raised her hand and reached up toward Lance’s shoulder, like a child much younger who wanted to be picked up.

“Okay, Princess,” said Lance, letting go of the girl’s hand and looping an arm around the back of her knees. “It’s your call.”

 

* * *

“—great sense of humor, too, and he’s great at being the castle’s engineer, but what he’s  _ really _ good at is noticing when someone’s upset. I love talking to him when I’m down. He cheers me right up. And Allura? Oh, man, I bet you’d  _ really  _ like  _ her _ . She’s really strong and super pretty. Almost as pretty as you.”

The girl grinned. She’d stopped crying not long after Lance had started talking, apparently soothed by his voice. She still hadn’t said anything, and Lance had started to wonder whether she could speak at all. She clearly understood Lance because she nodded or shook her head when asked a yes or no question, so she wasn’t deaf, and they did speak the same language, but she never actually answered him verbally.

All the same, she seemed very content to be in Lance’s arms, and Lance was happy to have someone around who actually listened to him, even if that someone was just a child.

“Hunk and Pidge are the brains of the group,” said Lance, a wistful smile on his face. “They’re  _ way _ too smart for me. Ninety-nine percent of what they say goes right over my head, but Sam and Matt, Pidge’s dad and brother, can step in mid-conversation and figure out exactly what they’re talking about in, like, two seconds. I wouldn’t be able to figure anything out if I had two  _ days _ .” He laughed brightly. “And  _ Keith— _ ”

Lance’s words died in his throat.

The girl in his arms must have sensed the emotion that hit him, because her smile disappeared in a flash.

“Sorry,” said Lance, smiling in her place and hoping it would be enough for both of them. “It’s just… He left the group a while back and we barely see him anymore. I mean, we see Pidge’s brother more than we see him, and he’s never even been an official part of the group. And it's just…” He lowered his voice and whispered conspiratorially. “Don’t ever tell him I told you this, because that jerk would  _ never _ let me live it down, but I actually really,  _ really _ miss him.”

The girl blinked up at him, frowning curiously. Probably wondering how Lance could call Keith a jerk and admit to missing him in the same breath. Lance couldn’t blame her. Sometimes, he wondered that himself.

“He was the only one who ever really listened to me, you know?” Lance shrugged. “I mean, Coran listens to everyone when they’re sad, and Allura’s basically become my best friend ever since she started piloting Blue, and Hunk and Pidge are still really fun to hang out with, but Keith was the only one who ever, you know, actually took what I said into account when I had a plan, or when I pointed out that he was doing something wrong.” He sighed and adjusted his grip on the girl in his arms, making sure she wouldn’t slip. “I mean, Shiro  _ used  _ to, but it’s like it’s sort of balanced out since the whole Lion swap disaster. Allura respects me more, and Shiro respects me less.”

He lifted his head and looked away from the girl, directing his frustration toward the end of the hall instead of at her.

“Any time I even  _ suggest _ that he  _ might _ be making a mistake, he yells in my face! He usually apologizes later, but he still doesn’t  _ listen  _ to me! And it’s…” Lance sighed emphatically. “I know it’s not his fault. Something’s really wrong with him. He’s not the Shiro I knew. And I’m pretty sure even he knows that. But it’s not like we have a therapist at the castle, and the pods don’t work for  _ mental _ health issues. I can’t  _ blame  _ him, I  _ know _ something bad happened to him, but that doesn’t change the way he keeps throwing caution to the wind and sending us right into danger because he won’t listen. And I think… No, I  _ know… _ ”

Lance screwed his eyes shut.

“I just know...if Keith was here, he’d know what to do. But he left. Shiro won’t even listen to Allura anymore, but I  _ know _ he’d listen to Keith if he was here.”

Lance’s shoulders sagged, and he opened his eyes to stare past the girl in his arms, at the tile floor beneath them.

“You know, before he left, I… I told Keith I was thinking about leaving Voltron.” He sighed. “He told me not to, but I keep wondering, you know, maybe if I did, he’d still be here. And he’d know what to do about Shiro, and everyone would listen to him, and everything would just go so much smoother, and I just… Sometimes, I—” Lance let out a sharp, stressed, hissing breath through his teeth.

“...Sometimes, I think the universe would be a lot better off without Lance McClain.”

The second those words fell from his lips, the very point on the tile floor he’d been staring at began to glow a bright, brilliant light, just like the fountain where he’d found the girl in his arms.

That perfectly circular spot grew and spread, reaching past Lance’s feet until it surrounded him. It shined like a spotlight from beneath him, bathing him in that otherworldly, blinding glow. A gentle breeze from nowhere kicked up, tugging at the cape on Lance’s armor and the hair that framed his face.

Eyes wide, lips parted in shock, Lance looked at the Covewish girl’s face.

Her eyes, like the floor Lance stood on, glowed a bright, brilliant, blinding white.

They were hypnotic. Magnetic. Lance couldn’t look away.

The white light crept into the corners of Lance’s vision, gradually shrinking his range of sight until everything—the stone floor, the murals, the girl in Lance’s arms—all disappeared, and there was nothing left but bright, blinding light.

 


	2. Throw Me to the Lions and Start Anew

It was like watercolor at first.

The world bled in bit by bit, black and gray walls appearing in odd, splotchy, pale layers. Even though it looked strange, Lance had spent too much of his life surrounded by those walls to mistake them for anything else. The black floors, the orange uniforms on the backs of the students...

“I’m at the Garrison,” he realized, breathless. “I’m on _Earth_. I’m...”

Home.

Lance shook his head. No part of him should have been happy. It couldn’t have been a more obvious illusion. Not when everything was warped and dream-like and outright strange.

And not when the Covewish girl he'd been carrying was nowhere to be found.

“She must have done this." Lance leaned in to inspect the odd, inconsistent warping on one of the walls. “Must be a Covewish thing. Maybe she’s trying to pay me back for helping her or something. Not like I actually did any— Whoa!”

When Lance reached out for the wall, he found he couldn't see his own hand. Not even something ghostlike, transparent. He was completely invisible to his own eye.

But he could still _feel_ the wall. It was still as cool and hard as he remembered it, and where his hand—felt, but unseen—came into contact with the cool metal, its warped, watercolor facade retreated, replaced by something solid and real and familiar that spread outward from where Lance’s hand should have been. Like water soaking into a dry paper towel.

Curious, Lance looked down at his feet—or the place where his feet should have been—and found that it was the same case for the floor he walked on. Wherever he stepped, the blurriness replaced itself with something solid, concrete, and familiar. And even when Lance moved from the spot where he’d been standing, or pulled his hand away from wherever it had been touching, the clarity stayed, and it continued to spread.

“Huh.” Lance frowned and flexed his fingers. “Okay…”

He took off down the hall.

When he ran, it wasn't fast, not like he was trying to escape from something. Just enough to spread the solid clarity as far as he could. He wasn’t sure whether the illusion had borders of if he could sneak onto a plane and fly all the way back to Cuba if he wanted, but for the moment, Lance was content with just seeing the Garrison the way it was supposed to look.

Lance stopped in place and turned around, eager to see the impression he’d left on the world in his wake.

And what he saw gave him pause.

He hadn’t recognized him when he’d rushed past, but the rapidly-clearing blur of wide-set orange and white was slowly turning into a very, very familiar face.

“...Hunk?”

Lance jogged back to the person he’d passed and walked around him to his front.

Sure enough, there was no denying that the person standing in front of Lance, looking through him as easily as Lance himself could, was his best friend since childhood. He had his hands on his hips, and he was frowning and muttering something under his breath.

“...Keith Kogane, huh? Great...”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Keith? What about him?”

Hunk, of course, didn’t answer, so Lance had no choice but to turn around and see what Hunk was talking about for himself.

The screen Hunk was staring at so intently read off the assigned training teams.

“Ohhh,” breathed Lance, putting his own hands on his hips and mirroring Hunk’s posture. “This must be the past. Guess that explains—”

“Keith!”

Lance dropped his arms and turned around, following Hunk’s gaze to the end of the hall.

And there Keith was, dressed in his old Garrison uniform, walking down the hall in their direction looking utterly miffed.

“Wait…” mused Lance, narrowing his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be—”

“Keith, hey!” Hunk pushed past Lance, knocking him out of the way, but apparently not feeling the body he’d pushed in the slightest. He caught up with Keith, who didn’t slow a single centimeter per hour upon being approached, and he began to ramble nervously.

“Hey, Keith, so, I’m your engineer—”

“His engineer?” Lance furrowed his brow. “No, wait—”

“—and our comms guy is someone named Pidge Gunderson,” continued Hunk, entirely unaware of the distress and confusion he’d just caused, as well as the fact that he seemed as invisible to Keith as Lance himself was, “but I’ve never had anyone named Pidge Gunderson in any of my classes, and I was wondering if— Okaaay, maybe I’ll talk to you later.”

Keith kept walking, even when Hunk slowed to a stop, and he rounded the corner, disappearing from view.

“What…” Lance shuddered. “What’s going on?”

“You’re looking for Pidge Gunderson?”

Lance turned toward the source of the familiar voice, and so did Hunk.

At the mouth of another corridor stood Pidge, tiny and very stressed-looking, and exactly the way Pidge had looked the day that they met.

“This _is_ the day we met,” breathed Lance. “But…” He turned around, toward the billboard where he and Hunk had been standing all that time ago, where the same event had taken place in Lance’s memories. “...Where am _I?_ ”

He turned back around, and he found Hunk and Pidge shaking hands.

Lance pushed a hand through his hair, shocked and confused. Pidge was...smiling. Lance could have sworn he’d remembered Pidge being so much more abrasive when they’d first met.

“—passing through,” said Hunk, who was grinning even wider. “You know, like a neutrino.”

Pidge laughed. “Nice.”

Lance shook his head, jaw dropped.

“What...the actual quiznak is going on?”

The watercolor blur from before faded back into view before Lance got the answer to his question. They worsened and shifted and the colors changed, and then they began to clear again, this time in the cockpit of the simulator.

And though Hunk and Pidge were in their usual seats, still blurred out, but clearly recognizable all the same, the pilot at the helm…

Lance frowned.

Blurry though it was, he still knew that mullet anywhere.

“What _is_ this?”

 

* * *

 

Shiro landed on the wet cavern floor no worse for the wear and let go of the rope that had led him there. The air was as musty and damp as it had been all the other times he’d visited it, but the blue glow that illuminated the stone walls was no less beautiful.

A dark silhouette sat in the lion’s light, and when it heard the splash Shiro’s boots had made, it turned around and looked over its shoulder.

“You know,” said Shiro, “it worries me when you sneak out in the middle of the night like this.”

“Sorry,” said Keith. And he genuinely did sound remorseful. “I just…”

He looked back at the lion.

Shiro sighed and crossed the shallow pond. “I know,” he said softly. “It’s hard not to think about. Believe me, I get it.”

“But it’s not just that,” said Keith. “I’ve spent so much time out in this desert, trying to figure out what’s been calling for me, and now that I’ve found it…”

“It’s locking you out,” supplied Shiro.

Keith nodded.

Shiro sighed and dropped to the stone floor beside Keith. “Well, I’ve spent the last year in an alien prison,” said Shiro. “And when I got out, all I could think about was trying to find Voltron, to get to it before the aliens did. And now that I have…”

Keith hummed in acknowledgment.

Shiro nodded. “And it sounds like Pidge and Hunk have been searching for just as long as you have. We’re all frustrated.”

“I’m not _just_ frustrated, though,” said Keith, knocking his knuckles against his raised knee. “I’m _confused_. Shiro, it was more than just energy. It was almost a voice. It was like it was calling for help.” He sighed and hunched his shoulders, scowling at the stone floor. “I don’t understand.”

“I wish I could help you, Keith.” Shiro rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m just as confused as you are.”

“Maybe it was calling out for someone else.” Keith tilted his head back and looked into the lion’s glowing, yellow eyes. “Maybe the only reason I heard it was because I was the only one who was listening. Maybe because I was calling out, too.”

Shiro lifted a hand and rested it on Keith’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. We just need some more time.”

“Well…” Keith narrowed his eyes. “If what you say is true, then time is the one thing we don’t have.”

Shiro opened his mouth, searching for an answer, but before he could find one, the ground began to shake, and when it did, Shiro’s grasp on reality faltered.

He was aware of where he was, that he was still in the cave with Keith and the lion, but the rumble had sent a part of Shiro back in time a full year, to a moon at the edge of a solar system and forgotten ice samples and an abandoned shuttle and a desperate need to protect that was never fulfilled.

He could hear Keith’s voice calling his name, and though it was right next to him, it felt a thousand worlds away.

A faint few words fell from Shiro’s lips before he knew he was speaking at all.

“ _They found me._ ”

“Not yet,” said Keith, pulling Shiro back into the present. “But they might find Pidge and Hunk if we don’t do something.”

Shiro narrowed his eyes. “Okay. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Lance’s footing in time and space seemed to shift every few minutes. Just when he got used to his surroundings, when the watercolor had faded Lance’s eyes cleared, the rug was pulled out from under him. But one thing was clear.

Lance knew exactly why he was where he was. He remembered what he had been saying to the girl. He understood why Pidge and Hunk got along better, why Keith was still at the Garrison, why everything seemed so much easier for the people he cared about.

He wanted to see a universe thriving without him in it, and he got exactly what he wished for.

Maybe things weren’t perfect. Maybe Lance still saw Keith dig through boxes inside of a blurry shack, maybe the Kerberos tragedy had still happened, maybe Hunk still threw up after every flight simulation, but...Keith could balance his search with school, and Hunk and Pidge were closer than they had ever been.

And when Shiro’s pod crashed, Keith was a lot more willing to accept help from people he knew than from a total stranger claiming to be his rival.

It was strange, certainly. Lance would never have guessed that one little girl would have been able to erase him from existence, especially not while still letting him see what changes were made to a world without him in it, but...as much as Lance hated to admit it, he liked the changes.

He liked seeing Team Voltron argue less when he didn’t add to the animosity. He liked seeing Pidge and Hunk rely on each other. He liked seeing the trust they’d already built that had only been present between himself and Hunk or Keith and Shiro before. Lance knew, without a doubt, once the team met Allura, they’d be able to form Voltron without any problems.

But there was a problem with that. One Lance hadn’t realized until Keith pointed it out.

“Now that we found it...what are we supposed to do with it?”

Lance’s eyes widened. He looked at each of his friends as they exchanged worried, clueless looks. Then he turned around and looked at the Blue Lion itself.

“Oh, come on,” said Lance. “This can’t be it. This can’t be the _one thing_ they couldn’t do without me.” He clenched his jaw and exhaled through his teeth. His hands dove into his hair, frantic, pulling. “Come _on,_ Blue! I didn’t even do anything to become the Blue Paladin! I know you picked me before, but why can’t you just pick someone else this time? What about Hunk? He’s friendly! Or— Or Keith? _He’s_ the one who sensed you out here, not me! I could pay him back for taking Red!”

Lance pressed his unseen hands against the Blue Lion’s forcefield. “Please, Blue? Just for a little bit? There’s a great Paladin waiting for you on Altea! You know there is! I only know her because of you! You just have to take everyone else to meet her!”

The corners of Blue’s metal muzzle began to soften, and Lance screamed in frustration.

“No!” He pounded his fist against the side of Blue’s quickly-dissolving forcefield. “You need a Paladin! The other Lions need Paladins! You can’t—!”

But it was too late. The cave was gone.

 

* * *

 

It was all too familiar. The rumbling earth. The rising stones. The great shadows as the ship blocked out the starlight.

The sirens from the Garrison, though… Those were new.

Shiro led the way to Keith’s shack, Keith close behind him, the two of them staying hidden in the shadows of the alien ship, out of its line of sight, out of the way of its tractor beam as much as possible.

When they emerged from the shadows, Keith and Shiro ran as fast as their legs could carry them to the front door. Keith yanked it open, and when he did, Shiro’s heart stopped.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen death. He didn’t remember where he’d seen it before, but he knew he must have, because finding Pidge and Hunk on the floor of Keith’s shack felt too sickeningly familiar.

But to Keith, it was clearly new.

“W-What…?” he breathed, stumbling back. “But we… We were just here. They were fine an hour ago, we… They were _fine—_ ”

“Keith...” Shiro’s voice cracked, and he swallowed to try to even out his tone. “Look, the… The map’s gone.”

“The map…?” Keith lifted his head and looked toward his corkboard. “...They know where Voltron is.” He pushed both hands into his hair and pulled. “It’s my fault—”

“Don’t,” said Shiro, grabbing Keith by the wrists. “None of this is your fault. It’s all them. Now are you going to help me stop them, or are we going to let them take Voltron without a fight?”

Keith lifted his gaze, his eyes wet with unshed tears, and he slowly lowered his hands. “...Do you really think we can make a difference?”

Shiro furrowed his brow. “We can at least try.”

 

* * *

 

The next time Lance saw the cave, he was almost alone with the Blue Lion. For a moment, he thought he _was_ alone.

Then he turned around, and he found Keith sitting at his feet, his eyes glued to the Blue Lion’s forcefield.

Lance took a deep breath. “What are you doing here by yourself, huh?”

Keith didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. But Lance would have gone crazy if he hadn’t asked.

He looked over his shoulder at Blue, then back to Keith. And he understood. Lance himself would have done the same thing.

Slow, defeated, Lance walked to Keith’s side and lowered himself to the ground. “I might not be able to talk to you, but at least I can keep you company.”

Keith sighed and kneaded his forehead with his knuckles, and for a split second, Lance almost thought that Keith had heard him. But no, he was just frustrated. And Lance couldn’t blame him for that.

“Come on, Ol’ Blue,” whispered Lance, raising his head to his old Lion. “He needs you. They all do.”

A quiet splash caught Lance’s ear, and he and Keith both turned around.

Shiro.

Lance sighed, relieved. Someone needed to look after Keith. Someone who could actually make a difference. And Shiro might have been the only person who could.

“You know,” said Shiro, “it worries me when you sneak out in the middle of the night like this.”

“Sorry,” said Keith. “I just…”

He looked at Blue.

Lance sighed.

“I know,” he and Shiro said at the same time.

Lance leaned back on his hands, letting Shiro take the lead. He would have been better at knowing what Keith needed even if Lance _wasn't_ invisible.

He listened in on their conversation, brow furrowed and eyes closed. None of it was new information, but it was all so different. Lance wouldn’t have thought that just existing would have changed things so much. And none of it had anything to do with anything he’d done. It was all because he’d been in the right place at the right time.

Or perhaps the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Maybe it was calling out for someone else.”

Lance opened his eyes and met Keith’s, which were as captivated as ever by the Blue Lion’s.

“Maybe the only reason I heard it was because I was the only one who was listening,” said Keith. “Maybe because I was calling out, too.”

Lance groaned, frustrated, and pressed his face into his hands.

It was maddening, watching Keith suffer and not being able to do anything about it. Even if Shiro was there, even if Shiro knew Keith better than anyone, there were things Shiro _didn’t_ know. Like what it was like on Earth when he was gone. What it was like being a cadet at the Garrison in the wake of the Kerberos mission. Things Lance would have understood.

Lance wished he could have said something. Even if it ticked Keith off. At least it would get his mind off the Blue Lion.

“Wonder if this is how people feel when they’re filming documentaries,” mumbled Lance, only half-listening to Keith and Shiro. “Just stuck watching because they know they’d mess it up if they actually stepped in.”

It had been so long since the last time he piloted the Blue Lion. It hurt, looking up at the Blue Lion in the same place where he’d found her and knowing that he couldn’t just knock on her barrier and let himself in like he had that very day.

But he’d never forget the way it felt. Taking off, breaking out of the cave, running through the desert… He’d never felt freedom quite like that. Even when he was taking down the Galra ship at Kerberos.

The same Galra ship that was probably on its way toward Earth as they spoke.

Lance wondered how much time had passed since the day his friends _should_ have left for Arus. It was hard to tell when his bridge through time had so many planks missing. It might have been just a day or two later. It might have been weeks.

“Guess there’s no way to know for sure,” mumbled Lance, running a hand down his face. “For all I know, the Galra could already be—”

The ground shook.

“...in the atmosphere.”

Lance jumped to his feet and looked at the cave ceiling as if he could see through it, dust and tiny stones dislodging from above and crashing all around him.

Shiro had frozen in terror. Keith screamed his name, desperate to pull him out of the nightmare past his mind had disappeared into.

And Lance… Lance desperately wished someone could do the same for him.

All he could do was look through the opening in the cave ceiling and the rope dangling down and the faint purple glow he could just barely see from outside.

“Oh, no…”

Without any alternative, Lance ran for the rope and began to climb up, Shiro and Keith hot on his tail.

The familiar sight of a Galra ship overhead froze Lance in his tracks, even when Shiro and Keith ran past him. His stomach felt as though it had turned to stone. He’d never been so close to a Galra ship without so much as a Bayard on hand, but it wasn’t that that terrified him.

It was the fact that they were on Earth.

The Galra Empire had found Earth.

His family, the very reason he’d chosen to become a Paladin in the first place, was in danger, and there was nothing he could do.

Lance clenched his teeth. Unlike Keith and Shiro, who had to maintain a modicum of stealth, he could run straight for the shack.

His legs didn’t get tired. His lungs didn’t strain. There was nothing keeping Lance from a full sprint for his entire run to the shack. Nothing slowed him down for even a second, except for one thing, one tiny issue that made him falter.

The door was open.

Shiro would never have left the door open.

Lance’s mouth felt as dry as the desert he stood in. His knees began to shake. Somehow, he already knew what he would find when he stepped inside.

“Let me be wrong,” he whispered desperately. “Please, please, please, please, please—”

“Go to hell!”

Lance’s eyes widened.

_Pidge._

Frantic, Lance pushed his way inside, only to stand just inches from the doorway, frozen in horror.

“Hunk…”

Lance fell to his knees, trembling, unable to look away from his friend’s face, or…

...or what was left of it.

He clapped a shaking hand over his mouth. He needed to throw up, but he knew he couldn’t.

And Pidge… Pidge was still fighting, but…

“I’m going to ask you one last time,” growled the Galra, pressing his gun firmer against Pidge’s forehead. “Where _exactly_ is the Blue Lion?”

“And I’m going to tell _you_ one last time,” hissed Pidge, eyes narrowed. “Go...to...h—”

The Galra’s weapon discharged, and Lance flinched violently. As if he himself had been shot at the same time, he fell forward, clutching at his head, pulling at his hair.

He barely paid any mind to the shuffling, or the quiet, satisfied sound in the back of the Galra's throat.

“So this is where you were hiding it.”

The Galra stood, and he walked through the door, unintentionally kicking Lance in the process and moving him out of the way as if he were weightless.

The door slammed, and Lance was left in the dark with all that was left of two of his closest friends, alone until the door opened again.

Lance didn’t lift his head. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to see Keith and Shiro just as torn apart as he was. He could barely handle his own pain, much less theirs on top of it.

“W-What…”

Lance dug his fingernails into his head. “Don’t.”

“But we… We were just—”

“Shut _up._ ”

“They were fine an hour ago, we—”

Lance clenched his jaw and hissed angry, heartbroken, defeated words through his teeth. “ _Shut up, shut up, shut up—_ ” He scratched his way down to his ears and covered them, as if not listening to Keith talk about what happened to Hunk and Pidge would make it so that it never happened at all.

But words still found their way through.

“Are we going to let them take Voltron without a fight?”

Lance lifted his head and whipped around. The world was a blur once more, but this time, it wasn’t because of the watercolor-like effect that marked a cut in the reel tape of the altered past, but because of the tears in his eyes.

“A fight?” Lance jumped to his feet. “What are you, crazy? You can’t fight them!”

“Do you really think we can make a difference?” asked Keith.

“You can’t!” Lance wrapped his hand around Keith’s arm. Even the fabric of his jacket was as immovable as stone. “There are way too many! You don’t have your Lion or your Bayard— You don’t even have armor!”

“We can at least try,” said Shiro, and Lance wanted so much to be able to punch him in the face, to do _anything_ if it meant keeping him and Keith out of danger.

“Don’t!” he begged. “Please! Hunk and Pidge are already— I can’t lose you guys, too! I _can’t!_ ”

But Shiro couldn’t hear him.

And Keith couldn’t hear him.

And they left for the cave without a second thought.

 

* * *

 

Allura clapped both hands over her mouth.

“It can’t be,” gasped Coran from over her shoulder.

“What…” Pidge took a wary step closer to Lance and the girl in his arms, eyes stirring with a mix of concern and curiosity. “What _happened_ to them? It almost looks like they’re frozen in time. Or they would if their eyes weren’t glowing like that.”

“I knew something was wrong!” screeched Hunk. “I _knew_ it! Lance was freaking out the whole time! He should have been the _first_ one on the scene when the Commander Gnov showed up!”

“So…” said Shiro, sounding more calculating than concerned. “What _did_ happen to them?”

“Covewish Wish-Walking,” said Lotor thoughtfully, raising a hand to his chin.

“Which is…?” Pidge turned around and scowled at Lotor, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“It’s a bit complicated to explain,” said Allura quickly. “Rest assured, Emperor Lotor had nothing to do with this. He couldn’t have. It wouldn’t even be dangerous, if…” She rubbed her arms. “If not for the age of the person Lance is Walking with.”

“I’m surprised she’s old enough to Walk at all,” added Coran. “I’ve never even heard of someone Walking at such a young age.”

“Could someone actually _try_ to explain what Wish-Walking is?!” demanded Hunk. “I don’t need a full explanation, just _something!_ Something to explain why my best friend looks like an LED-lit—”

“No…”

At the sudden sound of a voice, Allura turned toward the mouth of the corridor, as did the rest of the Paladins.

Backlit by the dim lights from the damaged ballroom stood the silhouette of a Covewish man, his long hair unkempt, an arm clutching his side.

The man gasped another pained word, something Allura couldn’t quite make out, something that may have been an ancient Covewish word, perhaps a prayer.

“ _Ralivela…_ ”

And without a further word or warning, the man fell forward and collapsed on the stone floor.

 

* * *

 

Lance screamed.

There was nothing more he could have done.

The laser cut through him, and he felt it, a searing pain worse than anything Lance had ever felt, but to the laser, Lance was no thicker than air, and it still met Shiro’s back with all of its intended force.

Lance gripped his chest and turned around, wide-eyed and desperate.

Keith stood frozen in front of the Blue Lion, his knife still raised, as if that would have ever done anything at all.

His gaze had glued itself to Shiro’s lifeless body. His eyes narrowed into the harshest scowl Lance had ever seen from him. His shoulders trembled.

“Keith,” gasped Lance. He’d known Keith for too long not to know what he was thinking. “Keith, _don’t—_ ”

Keith charged. A furious, despairing cry tore out of him like the spirit of a beast breaking out of a body that was always too small for the fire it held. If this Keith had been the one Lance had come to know, the Galra, the rebel, the leader, the Red Paladin, the Black Paladin, a member of the Blade of Marmora, then Lance wouldn’t have been surprised if he _could_ have taken on an entire ship’s worth of Galra armed only with unawakened luxite blade and the rage of losing his best friend, his _brother._

But untrained and inexperienced, Keith was just an angry teenager, and he was no match for even one Galra.

He didn’t come within five feet of the commander who had taken Shiro out before he was shot down.

A breathless, shuddering sob choked itself out of Lance, all his breath flying out of his chest at once.

The Galra commander shouted something, an order, perhaps to prepare the Blue Lion to be taken to the ship, but Lance couldn’t hear him, not over the chorus of _no, no, no, no_ ringing through his head.

_No, no, no, no, no! This isn’t real! It’s not happening! There’s no way they're all dead! They’re too—!_

Lance gripped his chest tighter. He must have been having a heart attack. Nothing else could have possibly hurt nearly that much.

He sank to his knees and closed his eyes, and his head fell so far forward that it hit the stone floor.

Anguished, aching with a pain so deep and real that it seemed to shatter his very soul, Lance screamed.

And when he opened his eyes, the universe seemed to be screaming back.

The watercolor Lance had seen before was back, but it was worse than Lance had ever seen it. The colors stained and bled and mixed and faded and swelled, like the world was still trying to figure out what it wanted to be.

Lance raised his head. The physical pain from the Galra attack had faded, but the emotional pain...that was still fresh.

The colors, as vivacious and variant as a rainbow, settled to a dark gray, marred only by blue.

Lance was back in the cave, exactly where he’d been before, but the Galra were gone, and…

“You know, it worries me when you sneak out in the middle of the night like this.”

“Sorry. I just…”

“Keith?” Lance could feel the pounding of his heart in every inch of his body. “Shiro?”

He shook his head, breathless and confused.

“What...the _fuck?!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have another chapter, I guess. I shouldn't have been working on this, but I've been really anxious this week. Had multiple nightmares. So...comfort fic.


	3. It's All Arranged

Lance could barely hear anything over the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears.

Keith and Shiro… They were alive again.

And Pidge, too, for sure. Maybe even Hunk.

As far as Lance was concerned, reliving the conversation right before the Galra attack meant one of two things.

Either he was in hell, and he was going to be forced to watch his friends die over and over and over again…

...or, somehow, he could change things.

Lance patted his cheeks hard, almost hard enough to be called slapping, and he took a deep breath.

He wasn’t sure what he could do, whether he could really do anything at all, but his friends were in trouble, and if there was even the _slightest_ chance that things could be a little different, he was going to pursue that chance.

He had time to doubt himself later. Until then, the only thing he had time for was action.

“Keith.” Lance dropped to the floor and grabbed Keith’s shoulders. The folds of his coat pressed into his hands, unbreakable no matter how much pressure Lance put into them. A testament to just how little effect Lance had on the world he was in. But he couldn’t give up. He couldn’t. Not with his friends’ lives on the line.

“Keith, I know you can do this.” Lance wasn’t sure why he knew. Maybe it was because of the instincts of a Red Paladin. Maybe it was just because he knew Blue well. But somehow, he knew, between Keith and Shiro, Keith had the better chance. “You were the best pilot at the Garrison. The Black Lion chose you as its pilot when Shiro disappeared. The Blue Lion called out to _you_ in this desert. Not me or anyone else.”

Keith didn’t react to a single word Lance said. Not even the words he spoke changed.

“I’ve spent so much time out in this desert, trying to figure out what’s been calling for me, and now that I’ve found it…”

“It’s locking you out,” said Shiro.

Lance growled. “Just because she’s shutting you out now doesn’t mean she always will!” He grabbed the sides of Keith’s head, as if trying hard enough to turn his head could make Keith look at him. Even his hair was as hard as stone under Lance’s touch. “You used to shut all of us out—Hunk, Pidge, Allura, me—but we’re cool now! Or… Or, I mean, I thought we were until everything happened with Shiro and you started pulling away again…” Lance shook his head. “But that doesn’t matter! Point is, we got through to you at some point! And you can get through to the Blue Lion!”

Keith lowered his head, and for a moment, Lance could have sworn that Keith was looking right at him, and his heart lurched, but only for a split second before Lance realized that Keith was looking _through_ him, at the Blue Lion’s feet.

“She called out for you,” said Lance firmly. “For _you_. None of us could hear that. Not even me.”

“Maybe it was calling out for someone else,” said Keith, and Lance’s heart lurched again. “Maybe the only reason I heard it was because I was the only one who was listening. Maybe because I was calling out, too.”

“Well, maybe that’s what she needs,” said Lance, raising his voice, talking over Shiro’s answer. “Maybe she needs someone who’s been just as lonely as she is. She’s been by herself for the last _ten-thousand years_. If anyone knows what that’s like, it’s gotta be you, Keith! You’re our loner, and—” Lance growled, frustrated, desperate. “And if you don’t do something soon, you’re all gonna die!”

“Well… If what you say is true, then time is the one thing we don’t have.”

The earth beneath them shook again.

Shiro’s eyes unfocused again.

Keith unknowingly pushed Lance away and reached for Shiro again.

And Lance buried his face in his hands.

A deep, trembling breath shook his shoulders, and he dragged his hands down.

“Keith,” he begged, despondent. “Come on, buddy. You listened to me when you were the Black Paladin. Listen to me now.”

Keith, utterly deaf to Lance’s pleading, kept shaking Shiro’s shoulders, calling out his name, just as incapable of reaching Shiro as Lance was of reaching him.

The mirrored frustration would have almost been funny if their lives weren’t on the line.

“What do I do here?” whispered Lance, screwing his eyes shut tight. “I can’t talk to them, I can’t touch them… I don’t even know if they’d listen to me if they _could_ hear me.” He let his hands fall to his knees. “And I thought I felt worthless _before_. Now look at me. I wouldn’t even be able to give them a ride off-planet if Blue _could_ see me. I’m not the Blue Paladin anymore. I’m not even the Red Paladin like this. I’m just a…” Lance squeezed his hands into fists and let them fall open again. “...a washout.”

A growl rolled through Lance’s mind. A familiar growl. One he hadn’t heard in a long time.

“What…?”

Wary, afraid of getting his hopes up only to have them smashed again, Lance climbed to his feet and slowly, cautiously turned around.

And just like the day he met her, the day she changed his life, Blue’s eyes were on his.

“Can you…” Lance could hardly breathe, could hardly think. His mind was swimming. “Can you feel me? Do you know I’m here?”

Blue responded with another growl, almost a purr, perhaps the closest she was capable of. It was assuring and familiar and every ounce as wonderful as it always had been.

Lance wanted to cry. He wanted to run to Blue and sit in her cockpit and refuse to ever leave again.

But it wasn’t the time. There _was_ no time. Pidge and Hunk were dead men walking.

But if Lance had Blue…

“Blue!” Lance ran to her forcefield and pressed his hands against the cool, familiar light. “Blue, I know I’m not your Paladin anymore, and I know I’m not really supposed to be here, and I don’t even know if I can use your controls like this, but if you just let me in this one time, I swear I’ll never, ever ask you for anything else ever again.” He sighed, and his shoulders sank. “So, please…”

The Blue Lion’s gleaming, yellow eyes flashed bright, and the forcefield retreated from Lance’s hands like a popped balloon.

The ground beneath Lance’s feet gleamed a bright, brilliant blue. A wind whipped up from nowhere. It reminded Lance of how he’d gotten where he was in the first place. That little girl… What she’d done to him had started out almost exactly the same.

“Shiro!” called Keith, though it was different from the way he’d been calling Shiro’s name before. “Shiro, look! It’s—”

Lance saw it in his head, the exact same way he’d seen it before. He wondered, faintly, whether Pidge and Hunk could see it, too, from Keith’s shack. Whether they were still asleep, whether they saw it in their dreams.

“...It’s Voltron,” breathed Shiro once the vision cleared. “ _That’s_ what they’re here for. Not just this part of it, but all of it.”

“Great,” said Keith. “So how do we keep them away from it?”

Blue leaned forward and bowed her head in front of Lance. She opened her mouth, and the ramp leading to her cockpit fell at Lance’s feet.

“...I guess that’s how,” said Shiro.

Lance smiled. Bittersweet though the moment was, he couldn’t help but feel just a little bit of excitement. It had been far too long since he’d last seen the inside of Blue’s cockpit.

He ran up the ramp and whipped around the corner that led to the room stationed behind Blue’s eyes.

The white seat against Lance’s back felt like the embrace of an old friend, and bizarrely, when Lance sat down, the seat responded. Unlike the rest of the world, it felt soft, and it gave under his weight. When it felt him, it scooted forward, the same way it always used to.

“Okay, magic Lion stuff.” Lance shook his head. “Should be used to this by now.”

He leaned back and peered around the seat he was in. Shiro and Keith were behind him, but they were definitely taking their sweet time.

“Guys!” snapped Lance, knowing full well he wouldn’t be heard. “Pidge and Hunk? About to die? Let’s _move it_ , _people!_ ”

“This is incredible,” mused Shiro as he ran a hand along Blue’s interior. “What kind of society could have built this?”

“I’m almost willing to believe no one did,” said Keith, only one foot past the door.

“Did you guys not feel that earthquake?” Lance gripped the controls. Just like with the seat, the controls responded to his touch. “Rescue now, talk later!”

The very second Lance deemed Keith far enough inside to not be in danger, he hit a sequence of keys on Blue’s interface, and Blue rose to her full height with a loud, triumphant roar that echoed through the cave. A pair of much smaller, surprised screams mirrored that roar through the cockpit.

“Hang onto your butts!” said Lance, pushing the steering apparatus forward. “We’ve got some friends to save! Let’s go, Blue!”

The wall of the cave they’d been sitting in crumbled like paper under the Blue Lion’s strength, just as it had all that time before, but there were differences. The bright, sunny day had been replaced by a dark, starry night, and unlike before, there was no time for barrel rolls or running in circles, not when there was a Galra ship in immediate view.

Lance and the Blue Lion rushed forward as a unit, like two minds controlling a single body. Speed took a priority to stealth, and the Galra fired their canons on sight, but Lance knew exactly what to expect, and he weaved around the attacks with an expert’s ease despite Shiro and Keith’s screams with every twist of Blue’s great, metal body.

The Blue Lion’s paws hit the earth in front of Keith’s shack and she took a hit that nearly landed on the shack itself. Unlike the Red Lion, Blue did have a fair amount of stamina. She still wasn’t Yellow, but she could still take more hits than Keith's flimsy shack.

“All right,” muttered Lance. “How do we get Pidge and Hunk out of there?”

 

* * *

 

Keith swore he had never been so terrified in his entire life.

He didn’t scare easily, and being in a fast-moving craft was normally Keith’s definition of a great day, but it was one thing to speed along the desert on a bike and something else entirely to be in the interior of a giant, alien craft shaped like a lion while an entirely different alien craft did everything in its power to take that lion down.

What was more, Keith could tell where they were going. They were headed straight for the shack, which was exactly where Keith would have gone if he had been the one in control.

Even between gripping the back of the seat for dear life and being thrown back and forth across the cockpit, Keith couldn’t help wondering whether the Lion could read minds. Either that, or it was sentient and just as bent on helping Pidge and Hunk as Keith himself was. Perhaps it had gotten attached during their daily visits.

An attack finally landed and it sent tremors throughout the entire lion, and Keith barely had the chance to realize why—that the Lion was protecting the shack—before an opening appeared at Keith’s feet, one that made a straight route down to the ground below.

“I guess it wants us to save Pidge and Hunk,” said Shiro, his eyes narrowed on the escape hatch.

“Great,” said Keith. “How do we do that?”

“I think we just drag them out of the house,” said Shiro. “What else can we do? I just don’t know how we're supposed do that without getting shot.”

Keith looked toward the main screen, toward the seat, then back at Shiro. “The Lion will protect us.”

“How do you know that?” asked Shiro.

Keith’s eyes darted down the escape hatch, then back. “It’s guarding the shack right now, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” said Shiro. “But are you sure you’re ready to take a risk like this?”

“Pidge and Hunk are in there,” said Keith. “We _have_ to do _something._ ”

“I know,” said Shiro. “I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into.”

Keith met his eyes and nodded sharply.

“Okay, then,” said Shiro. “We better be fast.”

He jumped through the hatch, and just before Keith did the same, he swore he heard a lightyears-distant voice mutter, “Finally.”

 

* * *

 

“Pidge! What are you doing?! Get away from the window!”

A blast hit the ground just beyond the glass and Hunk yanked Pidge down between the couch and the cinderblock legs of the makeshift coffee table.

Pidge squirmed away. “Hunk, look!”

Hunk lifted his head, eyes wide, and peered out the window.

A white, metal paw passed by from one edge of the window frame to the other, and Hunk’s mouth fell open.

“ _Holy crow._ ”

The door threw itself open and Hunk tore his attention away from the enormous lion outside to the thankfully familiar faces at the door.

“Shiro!” Hunk jumped to his feet. “Keith! Oh, man, we didn’t know where you guys were! And then firearms started happening and Pidge and I both got this crazy vision of the Lion from before turning into a leg of this giant robot and-and-and-and the _Earth_ is being attacked by _aliens_ right now. Do you realize that? You have to realize that, right?”

“You guys got through the forcefield!” said Pidge, jumping to his feet at Hunk’s side.

“It let us in on its own,” said Shiro. “I’ll explain once we get you guys out of danger.”

“Out of danger?!” squawked Hunk, who was caught somewhere between relief and skepticism. “How in the heck are we supposed to do that? There’s an alien ship shooting at us!”

“It’s shooting at the _L_ _ion_ ,” said Keith. “And right now, that Lion’s the only thing keeping us alive. If we want it to stay that way, we need to get in.”

“ _Get in?_ ” Hunk’s voice cracked. “Like, _inside the Lion?_ ”

“How do we do that?” asked Pidge, sounding a thousand times braver than Hunk did.

“There’s a door in its mouth—”

“It’s going to _eat us?!_ ”

“Shiro and I have already been inside of it.” Keith stomped toward Hunk and grabbed his wrist. “Now come on! Before we get shot!”

The world beyond the shack was absolute chaos. For a one-against-one fight, it looked an awful lot like a war zone. If it weren’t for Keith’s hand on his wrist, Hunk would have run right back inside.

The Lion looked at him, and his breath caught in his chest.

_It’s gonna eat us._

And when the Lion lunged forward, Hunk ducked and covered his head with his arm.

“ _It’s gonna eat us!_ ”

Keith, Shiro, and Pidge screamed as well, but only for a moment. Then the world went black, and for a split second, Hunk thought he had died.

But if he had, the shooting would have stopped.

Hunk peeled one eye open and looked around.

It was a bit darker than it had been without the purple lights shining down on everything, but it wasn’t pitch black. There was a row of blue floor lights leading up a ramp, and at the top of that ramp was a welcoming blue glow.

“Are we...inside the Lion’s mouth?” asked Pidge.

“Told you there was a door,” said Keith, climbing shakily to his feet and stepping over Hunk’s legs. “Come on. The cockpit's this way.”

Pidge’s jaw dropped. “This thing has a _cockpit?_ ”

 

* * *

 

Lance spared a glance over his shoulder when he heard the clatter of chaotic footsteps leading toward him, but even that glance was enough for the Galra to get a hit in.

“Sorry, Blue,” he murmured quickly. “Is everyone good? Headcount—one, two, three, four—perfect!”

Lance pulled back on the controls and Blue took off into the sky, dodging bright violet lasers with every twist of her body.

“Okay, how did I do this last time? Well, last time, it was deep in space, so I just gotta get them to follow me. How—”

“Are those controls moving by themselves?!” gasped Pidge. “Is this thing sentient?”

Lance clenched his teeth. It was easy to forget, in the heat of battle, that his friends couldn’t see them.

But that wasn’t important. What _was_ important was that they got out safely.

Lance pressed a button on the side of one of the levers and pushed it forward. When he did, a powerful blast of bright blue light shot out of his Lion’s mouth that tore along the side of the Galra craft.

“Okay, that should slow it down without making it immobile.” Lance released the button and tore off into Earth’s atmosphere. “Now let’s see if I can draw it away from our planet.”

_Our planet._

The words felt wrong in his mouth. Like a lie.

It wasn’t really his planet anymore, was it? Not when he didn’t exist.

His planet or not, Earth was a lot safer once the Galra ship had followed him halfway to Pluto.

Pidge, Keith, Hunk, and Shiro talked amongst themselves from behind Lance’s seat, echoing a conversation long-past.

“Where are we?”

“Edge of the solar system. There’s Kerberos.”

“It takes _months_ for our ships to get out this far. We got out here in _five seconds._ ”

Lance closed his eyes and sighed. He knew what happened next. But the Galra in the ship behind him knew where Earth was. He couldn’t just leave it.

“Sorry, Blue. I know you want to go home, but we’ve got one more thing we need to do before we can leave. Just stay away from the tractor beam, got it?”

Blue whipped around. She was ready.

So was Lance.

 

* * *

 

Pidge crashed into Shiro at the sudden shift in direction. “ _What_ is going _on?!_ ”

“I’m not sure,” said Shiro, his hand reaching down to steady Pidge’s shoulder. “But I think it’s trying to take on that ship.”

“That thing?!” squawked Hunk. “It’s, like, twenty times our size!”

The Lion shot off like a roman candle, forcing Pidge to cling to the back of the pilot’s seat. “I feel like someone should be sitting in this chair!”

“What? No!” said Hunk. “No _way_. That thing is, like, _haunted_. I’m not getting anywhere near it.”

“You’re holding onto the arm!”

“Yeah, but I’m not _sitting in it!_ ”

“Guys, cool it!” snapped Keith. “No one should be sitting in the pilot’s seat except the pilot!”

“There _is_ no pilot!” snapped Pidge right back.

“The Lion _is_ the pilot,” said Keith. “If it’s capable of thought, it’s capable of being distracted, and I’m not going to distract it by sitting somewhere I’m not supposed to.”

“So you admit it,” said Hunk. “You admit it’s haunted.”

“You’re an engineer!” snapped Pidge. “How are you this superstitious?!”

“Because this thing is not aerodynamically sound,” said Hunk, turning on Pidge with a distressed-looking scowl. “What, you think something shaped like a _L_ _ion_ can just escape Earth’s orbit and—and reach Kerberos in seconds? Do you _know_ how far Pluto is from Earth, Pidge?”

“Of course I—”

“Three-hundred twenty-seven light minutes!” screeched Hunk. “As in it takes light _five and a half hours_ to get from Earth to Pluto. It took _us_ closer to five and a half _minutes_. We traveled here at about an average of sixty times the speed of light. And we’re in a ship that’s shaped like a _l_ _ion!_ G-force alone should have killed us way before we even reached Mars, and yet here we are at the edge of the solar system being _tossed around while the giant, futuristic cat head we’re sitting in fires lasers at aliens._ Do _you_ have an explanation for that? Because I don’t!”

Pidge began to speak, then hesitated. “...Okay, so it’s weird, but there has to be a scientific explanation for it.”

“And maybe there’s a scientific explanation for ghosts!” said Hunk. “I’m willing to believe anything right now!”

Pidge turned toward Shiro. “You’ve been around aliens for a while now, right? Does this make any sense to you?”

Shiro’s eyes were locked on the pilot’s seat. He didn’t seem to have heard a single word said to him.

“Shiro?” Keith reached up and grabbed Shiro’s shoulder.

Shiro turned around, eyes wide. For a split second, Pidge thought that he was going to lash out again, just like he had in the cave, but that worry quickly passed. Shiro had clearly been through a lot. But he was a good person.

He’d been Matt’s friend, and Pidge couldn’t help trusting Matt’s judgment.

“Sorry,” said Shiro. “I thought I saw… I’m fine.”

He looked up at the main screen.

Pidge followed his gaze.

The alien ship the Lion had been fighting was done for. The lights were out, there were cracks in the hull, and if Pidge could take an educated guess, those seemed to be the engines that were flooded and frozen, frozen with ice that wasn’t likely to melt anytime soon, not in the 0K vacuum of space.

The Lion turned away from the wreckage and shot away from it.

A circle appeared in front of the Lion, too modern-looking to be a spell circle, but too mystical to feel entirely technological.

Pidge started to get the feeling that Hunk may have been right. Maybe there was something to the Lion that technology would struggle to explain.

“Where’s it taking us?” asked Keith, barely more than a whisper.

“No idea,” said Shiro. “But wherever we’re going, it can’t be worse than the aliens that captured me. The Lion saved us. I’m willing to trust it.”

“What if we do trust it and it turns out that it _is_ worse than the aliens that captured you?” asked Hunk. “What happens if we go through there and there’s, like, a hostile army on the other side? What if it’s leading us to our deaths?”

“It’s not.” Keith crossed his arms over the top of the seat and stared at the opening on the main screen like he was trying to scry something in the swirl of stars on the other side. “Whatever’s controlling this Lion, we can trust it.”

“But how do we know?” asked Pidge, voice soft and uncertain.

“Like Shiro said, it saved us from that alien attack. Saved _Earth._ ” The leather of Keith’s gloves creaked as his hands tightened into fists. “And… I just have a feeling.” He met Pidge’s eyes. “It’s on our side. I can tell.”

There was a stillness to the cockpit, and the Lion itself had slowed down, as if it had heard what Keith had said about it.

But the slowness quickly passed, and the Lion resumed its flight toward the opening it had created.

Pidge sighed. “Whether it’s on our side or not, it’s not like we have a choice. Get ready, guys.”

 

* * *

 

The lights in Keith’s humble quarters flared up, and Keith, who had become a particularly light sleeper during his time spent with the Blade, shot upright in his bed.

His mother stood in the doorway, a concerned scowl on her face.

“Get up,” she said sternly. “Kolivan’s looking for you.”

“Do you know why?” asked Keith, throwing his blankets back and stepping down from his bed, already dressed in his suit. He rarely went without it for longer than a shower anymore.

“I don’t have any details,” said Krolia, turning away from the door. “All I know is that Voltron is calling for you.”

“Voltron?” Keith’s brow furrowed and followed his mother close behind. They hadn’t set up a conference. Keith would have known about it. Something happened. Something big.

A tiny voice in the back of Keith’s mind twisted his stomach.

 _Something happened with Shiro,_ it said. _Something bad. You know he’s been acting weird. They need you to pilot the Black Lion again._

Krolia opened the door to the conference room and waited for Keith to walk in first, and when he did, he found Kolivan waiting for him in front of the screen.

And on that screen stood Allura and Shiro.

Keith might have breathed a sigh of relief, if not for how grave they both looked.

“I’m guessing this isn’t a social call,” said Keith, taking his usual place at Kolivan’s side.

“Unfortunately, no.” Allura’s gaze dropped below the bottom of the screen. Keith hadn’t seen her that sad in a long time. Not since Shiro disappeared the second time, the first for her.

“Keith…” Shiro’s voice was a bit harder, but not without its own sympathy. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to put it as simply as I can.”

Those words alone made Keith’s heart leap into his throat. “Put _what_ as simply as you can?”

“We need you back on the team.”

Keith furrowed his brow. “Back on the…?”

“Well…” Allura glanced in Shiro’s direction, seeking assurance, then turned toward the screen again. “We seem to find ourselves one Paladin short." She winced. "Again." She shifted the clasping of her hands. "Specifically, we’re lacking a Red Paladin. We should count ourselves lucky to have one on reserve, but…”

Allura closed her eyes, and she took a deep, shuddering breath.

Keith clenched his fists. He wasn’t patient enough to let her say the words she was steeling herself for. He needed to know.

“What happened to Lance?”


	4. A Matter of Time

Lance had barely stepped foot on Arusian soil before Blue closed herself off again.

He turned around, hands in his unseen pockets, and watched her shields crawl over her again. No doubt waiting for Allura to take his place. Again.

A small, bittersweet smile tugged at Lance’s lips.

“Thanks, Blue.”

 

* * *

 

“The Red Lion…” Allura opened her hands, and rather than moving the stars where the Lions already were, the Red Lion appeared independent of the map. “...is temperamental, and the most difficult to master. It’s faster and more agile than the others.” Her gaze connected with Keith’s. “But also more unstable.”

Keith crossed his arms. Again, he could see what Allura was getting at.

“Its pilot needs to be someone who relies more on instincts than skill alone.” She gently tossed the hologram of the Red Lion in Keith’s direction. It floated to him as light and easy as a feather. “Keith, _you_ will fly the Red Lion.”

“What about the Blue Lion?” asked Keith.

“None of you seem to quite fit the bill on that front,” said Allura, clasping her hands in front of herself. “As such, I will be piloting her.” She frowned. “But not yet. Not when the castle is in such disarray. I can’t even locate the Red Lion yet, and right now, the castle’s damages require my attention more than anything else.”

“So the Blue Lion is just going to sit here while we look for the rest?” asked Keith.

“Unfortunately,” said Allura, “we don’t have much of a choice.”

“But it brought us here,” said Keith. “Maybe one of us could take your place while we look for the other Lions.”

“I’m afraid that just isn’t how the Lions work,” said Coran, twisting his mustache. “They won’t follow just anyone. The relationship between a Paladin and a Lion work like the connection between soulmates. They complete one another. Draw off one another’s energy. You can’t just step into someone else’s Lion and make it work. It won’t respond to you.”

“But it _brought us here,_ ” repeated Keith. “Why would it work then and not now?”

“I’m not sure,” admitted Coran. “Perhaps it recognized desperate times and resorted to desperate measures. But it won’t do it again. Not now that you’re out of danger. After all, it did put its barrier back up the moment you stepped out of the Lion, isn’t that right?”

“Well, _yeah,_ but—”

“Keith.” Shiro clapped a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Arguing isn’t going to change how a machine functions. Even one we don’t understand. We don’t have time to waste, and Coran and Allura know better than we do.”

Keith looked toward him, and though his eyes narrowed, he fell silent.

“I need you to take Hunk to pick up the Yellow Lion, got it?” He let go of Keith’s shoulder. “Pidge and I will find the Green Lion.” He lifted his head. “In the meantime, Allura, Coran, you focus on doing whatever needs to be done to find the Red Lion.”

“I’ll get the castle’s defenses ready,” said Allura. “I’m sure they’ll be needed. Coran...” She turned to her advisor. “Ready a pair of pods. We’ll focus on the Red Lion once everyone else has their own missions to worry about.”

Keith crossed his arms. He doubted a pod would have the defenses necessary in case of an attack.

Something just didn’t seem right.

 

* * *

 

Lance buried his face in his hands. Not that it did him much good. If he opened his eyes, he could see right through his fingers.

He lifted his head, took a deep breath, and clapped a hand on the back of Keith’s chair.

“Okay, listen. I know you can’t hear me, but _listen._ ” He leaned in close to the side of Keith’s head, as if speaking directly into Keith’s ear would help him to hear better. “That thing Coran said about this planet being peaceful? Yeah, that’s not happening. And I know you have a fire lit under your butt at every second of every day, but I need you to stay calm for this trip, okay? _I_ nearly got killed when I was in _Blue._ There’s no way this dinky little pod is gonna handle a single hit.”

Keith made no sign that he’d heard Lance. Of course he didn’t.

“Look, you’re a really skilled pilot.” Lance worked himself between the side of Keith’s seat and the wall of the pod to get a better look at his face. “I know I give you crap all the time, but you’re good behind a wheel, I’ll give you that. You have to use that to your advantage here or you and Hunk are _both gonna die_ and I am _not_ gonna watch that happen again.”

They reached the end of the wormhole, Black and blue gave way to earthy canyons.

And gunfire greeted them.

Hunk screamed. Keith gripped the controls, teeth clenched.

Lance gripped onto the back of Keith’s chair. “Go, go, go, go, go!”

Keith, as if having heard him, pushed the controls forward and sent the pod into a nosedive.

“Not like that!” cried Lance over the sound of Hunk’s increasingly loud screams. “You’re gonna get killed that way, too!”

“Shut up and trust me!”

Lance’s stomach lurched, from more than just the death-spiral.

Hunk. He was just talking to Hunk.

Lance _knew_ that.

But it still felt like...

Lance swore that had to be the third time something like that had happened, and it was Keith every single time.

It was probably a combination of wishful thinking and pessimism. Hoping that _someone_ could hear him and knowing that, with his luck, if someone _did,_ of course it would be mullet-breath.

Keith yanked back on the controls just in time to avoid crashing into the earth, and when he did, the two pods chasing them down crashed in the same zone they’d narrowly avoided. The only threat left was the army of sentries firing lasers. It was better than the pods, but not by much.

Keith stayed low to the ground, weaving between sentries and knocking into a fair few with his wings. “I’m gonna drop you off by the mine entrance.”

“Drop me off?” gasped Hunk, taking his first breath from screaming from the moment they’d emerged from the wormhole. “What— What do you mean _drop me off?_ What, are you gonna slow down—”

“Nope,” said Keith. “Get ready to jump.”

“ _Jump?!_ ”

Keith took one hand off the controls and reached for the dash. “Jump.”

The pod ejected Hunk from the passenger seat right to the entrance of the cavern.

Lance stole a look through the windshield as Hunk tumbled into the elevator shaft, just like before.

And just like before, Lance didn’t have time to watch.

He hopped into Hunk’s former seat and gripped the interior.

“Okay, Keith, you need to watch out for those—”

Keith rammed into a line of automated soldiers, taking them all out in one fell swoop.

“...Sentries.”

Keith threw a glance over his shoulder and laughed—because he was Keith and Keith got a weird kick out of battles sometimes, definitely not because of what Lance said—and he pivoted on a dime.

“Okay, just—” Lance pointed an invisible finger in his face. “Don’t get _too_ confident. There’s more where those first two pods came from, and if you don’t watch out— Whoa!”

Lance gripped the sides of his seat as Keith took off into the sky. Two more pods appeared to replace the first two.

Keith got a devilish grin on his face.

“...What are you doing?”

And he pushed the steering apparatus forward.

Lance screeched. “What are you doing?! Keith?! Hello?!”

The two pods dove for him.

“Keith, I don’t know what you’re doing, but you better not get yourself killed after I went back in time to save you!”

Keith’s grin widened. He pushed the pod harder.

The Galra pods flew faster.

Lance grabbed Keith’s arm. “ _Keith…_ ”

The pods drew ever closer.

Lance held his breath.

Keith yanked the controls.

The pod rolled onto its side, and Keith flew between the two diving for them, narrowly missing their trajectory.

Unfortunately for the two Galra pods, they didn’t miss each other.

They crashed into one another, and Keith eased their pod back into an easy, level cruise, a smug smile playing on his lips.

“...You show-off,” grumbled Lance, letting go of Keith’s arm. “If you knew I was here, I’d swear you were trying to give me a heart attack! How are you better with an old Altean pod than I was with a Lion of Voltron, huh?”

Keith turned the pod around, humming idly to himself, as if it was just another day to him.

“Guess we didn’t need the Blue Lion after all.”

Lance leaned back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling.

“…I really was just a taxi service, wasn’t I?”

 

* * *

 

“Not so bad?! Keith, are you _nuts?!_ ”

“What?”

“You had to eject me from the pod!” squawked Hunk. “You were almost hit by missiles! _Missiles!_ ”

“Yeah, _almost,_ ” said Keith, crossing his arms. “You showed up just in time, so what’s the big deal?”

Hunk groaned and buried his face in his hands.

Keith couldn’t figure out why he was so upset. It wasn’t like anyone got hurt.

“What about the Red Lion?” asked Shiro. “Have we found that yet?”

“Allura just located it,” said Coran. “Bit of good news and bad news. Good news is, the Red Lion’s nearby. Bad news is it’s on that Galra ship now orbiting Arus. But wait! Good news again!” He brightened, arms akimbo. “We’re Arus!”

Keith scowled.

Shiro pushed past him. “They’re here already?”

“Yes. Guess my calculations were a bit off. Finger-counting is more of an art than a science.”

Keith kneaded his forehead with his knuckles.

Of course _his_ Lion was the one that was captured by the Galra. Of course. Nothing else had ever been easy for him. Why would finding his Lion?

The main screen behind Coran flickered to life and a purple face appeared where sky and clouds had been a moment before.

“Princess Allura.”

Keith clutched a fistful of his jacket sleeve.

So...that’s what the Galra looked like.

“This is Commander Sendak of the Galra Empire. I call on behalf of Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known Universe. I am here to confiscate the Lions. Turn them over to me, or I _will_ destroy your planet.”

As quickly as Sendak appeared, he disappeared, leaving Keith and the rest of his hodge-podge team in stunned silence. At least, until Shiro spoke up.

“All right, let’s not panic.”

“Not panic?” Hunk gestured at the screen. “The scary, purple alien said he’s driving his battleship toward us, we only have four Lions—”

“Technically, three working Lions.”

“Yes, thank you, Pidge. _Three_ working Lions, and a castle that’s, like, ten-thousand years old!”

“Actually, it’s ten-thousand _six-hundred_ years old—”

Keith ran his hand down his face as the team began to argue. He felt like he was losing his mind.

For some stupid reason, he felt responsible for a Lion he’d never even seen. Like everything was his fault somehow just because he was the only one they hadn’t yet found. Like it was _his_ fault they couldn’t just form Voltron and take Sendak out.

“...Keith? You all right, buddy?”

“Of course I’m not okay! We’re being attacked by _aliens!_ Why would I be?!”

The arguing stopped.

Keith lowered his hand from his face.

Everyone was staring at him.

“ _What?_ ”

Shiro clapped a hand on his shoulder, sent him a concerned look, then turned to Allura to bring them back to the matter at hand, the incoming attack.

Everyone else just stared.

 

* * *

 

Lance’s knee bounced. He was squeezed into a small cockpit with Allura, he knew he should have been paying more attention to her, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the Green Lion.

Where Keith was.

Lance _swore—_

He knew it sounded crazy, but...truth be told, he still didn’t know what was going on. Maybe it wasn’t as crazy as he thought.

Maybe Keith _could_ hear him.

“Attention, Galra ship! Do not fire! We are surrendering our Lions!”

Lance looked at Allura through the corner of his eye as she recited the same script she’d given him all that time ago when his journey began.

“I wish I could talk to you,” he mumbled. “You know all kinds of crazy alien stuff. Maybe you’d know what’s happening to me.”

Blue illuminated all around them and a comforting rumble rolled through her body.

Allura lifted her head, eyes wide, surprised. Confused.

Lance heard the faint buzz of Hunk’s voice from her helmet.

A purple light at the bow of the Galra ship began to glow.

“Allura…” Lance paled. “Allura, the _tractor beam—_ ”

The purple light flashed brightly.

Blue quaked.

Allura screamed, and she fought Blue’s controls.

Lance wrapped his hand around hers and pulled.

Nothing. Like the whole universe was made of stone.

“Come _on!_ ” cried Allura. “Blue Lion, _please!_ ”

Lance clenched his teeth.

It was his fault.

Blue had responded to _him._

That distracted Allura.

It was _his fault._

The world began to blur.

_This is my fault._

 

* * *

 

“—which means, unfortunately, I’ll have to stay behind to work on the particle barrier.”

“So I’ll be going up there _by myself?_ ”

“It’s just one ship, Hunk. We’ve seen a single Lion take out a Galra ship before.”

“Yeah! The _Blue_ Lion! And it clearly knew what it was doing! I don’t! I—”

“Hunk, you’ll be fine. Just don’t panic.”

 

* * *

 

Lance floated in space.

He hovered, stone still, beside the Yellow Lion, where the Blue Lion once was.

It wasn’t there anymore.

Hunk was by himself.

Lance watched the Yellow Lion hang in place.

Unmoving.

“Come on, Hunk…”

The tractor beam began to glow.

“Come _on,_ Hunk! Don’t freeze up, buddy, I know it’s scary to be by yourself, but—”

The beam fired.

Hunk didn’t move.

Lance grabbed the helmet he couldn’t see, helpless to do anything but watch.

He messed everything up when he was there, he messed everything up when he _wasn’t_ there—

_What other option—?!_

 

* * *

 

The watercolor faded into reality once more, and Lance lifted his head.

He stood in the shadow of the Blue Lion, feet on the ground, eyes on Blue’s barrier.

She lowered her head.

The barrier disappeared.

And she opened her mouth.

“...Again?” asked Lance. “Are you sure?”

Blue said nothing.

The Green and Yellow Lions shot out of their bays.

Lance took a deep breath. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

 

* * *

 

“Uh, Allura?”

“...Yes, Keith?”

Keith squinted at the Green Lion’s rear-facing camera. “...Did you change your mind?”

“Er…” Allura cleared her throat over the communicator. “No… No, I didn’t.”

Pidge leaned forward in their seat. “So the Blue Lion’s moving on its own? Again?”

“Even I don’t claim to understand everything about the Lions,” said Allura, though the concern in her voice was hard to miss. “Perhaps… Perhaps it simply sensed it was needed.”

“Well, _I’m_ not complaining,” came Hunk’s voice. “Even ghost company is better than _no_ company. I was _not_ looking forward to doing this alone.”

Keith narrowed his eyes.

Maybe he should have been glad for the extra help, like Hunk was, but...

Something just...didn’t feel right.

 

* * *

 

“Sendak is entering the Arusian atmosphere. We need Voltron, now!”

“So, like, are we forming it with the ghost, or…?”

Allura clenched her teeth. “ _No,_ Hunk. Not this time.” She turned from the main screen and ran for the Blue Lion’s hatch.

“Uh, do you even know how to fly?” asked Pidge.

“I’ve been flying the Castle of Lions since I was a child.”

“I don’t think that’s the same thing,” said Pidge. “Like, just because I know how to drive an automatic doesn’t mean I know how to use a stick. Are you gonna be okay?”

“If you could figure it out, I can figure it out.” Allura opened the doors, stepped inside, and turned around. “I’ll be fine.”

The doors closed, and Allura’s lift began to descend.

She clasped her hands in front of her chest and closed her eyes.

“...Blaytz, if that’s you, I…”

She tilted her head back.

“If you’re really there...I may need your help.”

 

* * *

 

The Blue Lion’s paws hit the earth with a thunderous quake. The rest of the Lions each touched down to its left, one by one.

Lance gripped the back of Allura’s chair.

“Okay, you’ve got this. Coran can handle the castle by himself. He’s done it before. Just...focus on Blue. I know you can do it. I’ve _seen_ you do it. Just…” He took a deep breath. “Just...not when you didn’t know anyone else in the team.”

He moved to the arm of Allura’s seat and kneeled on the floor.

“That’s okay, though. You don’t need to know everyone. You’re _Allura._ If you could connect with the Balmera, you can form Voltron with a bunch of near-strangers in a life-threatening situation. I mean, if _I_ could form Voltron with _Keith_ back then, you should have no problem, right?”

A fleet of Galran pods swooped down fired at the particle barrier in front of their faces.

The ship charged its ion cannon.

Allura sucked in a breath.

Lance narrowed his eyes. “At least...I hope so.”

The ion cannon fired.

The earth shook.

Lance winced.

Shiro’s voice came in from Allura’s helmet, tinny and muffled to Lance’s ear.

He wished he could hear it. He missed Shiro’s old pep talks. The ones he gave before he was captured the second time. Before he changed.

But Allura could hear it. And Lance could see the hardened determination creep into her expression.

She needed it more than he did.

Allura pushed Blue’s controls forward, and Blue charged.

Lance gripped the arm of her chair.

She leaned forward, eyes fierce and focused on the screen ahead of her.

Coran’s face appeared on a small screen to Lance’s right.

“Erm, might want to hurry!” cried Coran, visible sweat on his brow. “Hate to rush you guys, but our power’s running, well…low. Almost on empty, actually. I won’t be able to keep the particle barrier up for much longer!”

“Hang in there, Coran.” Allura’s grip tightened around her controls. “We just need a little more time.”

Coran’s window disappeared. Lance watched Allura’s brow furrow behind her visor.

“ _Please, Blaytz…_ ”

Lance closed his eyes and pressed his forehead into the arm of Allura’s chair.

She’d called him that before. In the elevator.

Of course she thought Lance was Blue’s original Paladin. Some unseen force was piloting the Blue Lion and doing _absolutely nothing else._

Hunk thought he was a ghost, and...if any ghost was going to haunt the Blue Lion, it would _have_ to be Blaytz, right?

But…

“I’m not him, Princess,” whispered Lance. “I _wish_ I was. If I was, maybe I could actually _do_ something.”

Something broke the sound barrier, and Lance lifted his head.

...The tractor beam.

Right.

That happened last time.

They were pulled into the tractor beam and the particle barrier broke down. That...would have been the sound Lance heard.

A choked sob caught Lance’s ear. He turned to look.

Tears streamed down Allura’s face. Her hands shook on the controls.

“Allura…”

Lance moved to the front of the cockpit, between Allura’s knees and the dash.

“Come on, Allura. You _have_ to form Voltron. I can’t do it for you. No one…” He swallowed. “No one even knows who I am anymore. Not you, not Hunk or Pidge or Shiro, or Keith… I don’t even know if my own _family_ knows me anymore.”

Hunk’s scream came through Allura’s helmet, layered with other staticky voices Lance couldn’t identify.

“I’m sorry, everyone,” whispered Allura. “I thought… I thought I would be able to succeed where my father failed. But I was wrong. He was right to hide the Lions. I should have followed his example. I’ve done nothing but put you all in danger. I’m so, so sorry.”

Lance shook his head. “Allura, no, you were _right._ The universe needs to be saved, and we—” He clenched his hands into fists. “... _You’re_ the only ones who can save it. And if you can just get past this, you’re going to _see_ that.”

Allura’s only response was to sob.

Lance reached for her hands. They trembled under his own.

“...I wish you could hear me.” He squeezed Allura’s hands and was met with nothing but stony resistance. “I wish—”

His eyes snapped wide open.

He looked to the ceiling.

“Blue! You know I’m here, right? And you have a connection to Allura! You can tell her I’m here!”

Blue’s voice rumbled in Lance’s head, sending concern, question, uncertainty.

Lance clenched his teeth. “Yeah, I _know_ she doesn’t know who I am. She’s probably just going to think I’m Blaytz. But…”

An echo rang through Lance’s mind, completely unrelated to Blue. A memory.  Something someone told him a long time ago.

_“It’s not about the glory, Lance.”_

It was stupid. It was cliche. It was something Lance should have been able to come up with on his own. There was nothing special or unique about those words.

And yet, for some reason, Lance could so clearly hear Keith’s voice in his mind.

_It’s not about the glory._

“I don’t care if Allura thinks I’m someone else. I don’t care if she doesn’t know my name. I don’t care if she has no idea who I am. She just needs _somebody._ Someone to show her she’s not alone. That she’s a part of this team, even if she doesn’t know anyone else on it yet. Just…”

Lance’s hands slid from Allura’s to the controls she gripped so tightly.

“...Let me be _someone_ for her, okay? Even if it’s Blaytz.”

Lance felt a jolt.

Blue’s presence completely filled his mind. It had been _so long_ since he felt that.

And through her, he felt Allura. Just like when they formed Voltron together, when _they_ were a team.

That energy spread outward, reaching, groping, until it met something new.

New, and yet so familiar.

Red.

Lance was still connected to Red. And that connection was strong. Even in a time before he became Red’s Paladin.

And something reached back, something curious and confused and desperately seeking.

And Lance realized, with a jolt, who he’d just connected with.

Keith.

Keith had reached for him. For the strange presence that had just connected to his Lion in such a desperate time. For the hand that reached for him when he was falling off the edge of a cliff.

And Allura… Lance felt her follow the trail he’d marked, the path to Red, to Keith.

They’d bonded.

Desperate, hopeful, Lance tried to reach for Black, for the leading Lion he was never meant to pilot, but the core he’d connected to time and time again, every time Voltron was formed.

And he felt Shiro.

And he reached for Green, and he found Pidge.

And he reached for Yellow, and he found Hunk.

And Allura followed each and every connection and formed her own, as if Lance was dragging her by the hand, introducing her to each of his best friends one by one.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, and he heard Allura breathe with him.

“Come on, Allura… _Form Voltron._ ”

 

* * *

 

_CRASH_

Keith lifted his head, eyes wide, and found himself staring at a wall of crumpled metal.

The ion cannon.

He’d thrown himself into it.

No— He’d _punched_ it.

He heard his team cheer in his ears, and… And he _was_ relieved. He thought he was going to die. He thought _Shiro_ was going to die. He thought the whole _planet_ they were on was going to be destroyed. He was definitely, absolutely relieved.

But something was _strange._ Red was… It was hard for Keith to explain, even to himself, but Red felt...thrilled. And it wasn’t just the heat of the battle.

It had something to do with the Blue Lion.

And—

“Let’s get that cannon!”

And Keith had no time to figure out what it was.

He clenched Red’s controls in his grip, tightened his jaw, and opened hers.

Maybe he didn’t have time to figure out what was going on yet.

But he _would_ figure it out.

It was only a matter of time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm mostly working on my other fic right now, but I've been sick this week and I didn't want to risk messing something up with my inability to focus so close to the climax of that story, soooo I worked on this instead. So. Surprise.


	5. One by One

Keith watched Shiro remove his helmet, uncovering the new haircut he’d given himself after Keith found him, after he’d been brought back from the Galra, again.

“Shiro, are you—”

“I’m _fine,_ Keith.”

Keith narrowed his eyes. He doubted that. Shiro had had more than one breakdown during the Omega Shield incident.

Something was wrong.

But...they were _all_ under stress. And Shiro was high-strung on the best of days.

“What about you?” asked Shiro, his own eyes narrowed. “You almost died out there today. If it wasn’t for Allura—”

“Fine,” insisted Keith in the exact same tone Shiro had used. “I’m fine. I’m just…”

He glared at the helmet in his hands.

“...I’m going to the—”

“The infirmary?” asked Hunk, unsurprised, unimpressed. “Wow. What a concept.”

Keith clenched his teeth.

Shiro set a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll send someone up with dinner later. But, Keith, try not to—”

Keith brushed his hand off and walked away. He already knew what was coming.

_Try not to obsess too much._

Like Shiro and Pidge hadn’t obsessed just as much when they made their first rescue, when the aliens in those pods might have known something about Matt and Sam.

Why was _he_ the weird one?

The infirmary doors opened automatically and Keith made his way inside.

Past the Covewish man that had collapsed in the corridor.

Past the curled-up little girl Coran had apparently had to pry from Lance’s arms.

To Lance himself.

Keith raised his hand to the glass.

Frost crawled out from the point where his glove met the surface, fogging his view of Lance’s face. His eyes, glowing, frozen wide open in permanent shock. His arms still in the same position they’d been in when he’d been found, still curled in what looked like a shrug, an unasked question.

_Why?_

_Why did this happen to me?_

_Why didn’t you stop it?_

_Why did you leave?_

_Why weren’t you there, Keith?_

The infirmary doors whooshed behind Keith as they reopened.

Keith looked over his shoulder.

Allura stood in the doorway, her hair let down, an uncertain look in her eye.

“...Do you mind if I join you?”

Keith didn’t answer.

Allura seemed to take that as permission. She crossed the room and took a slow seat on the steps in front of Lance’s pod, by Keith’s feet.

“...Aren’t you supposed to be working on Lotor’s ship?”

Allura set her hands on her knees. “Lotor said I should take a break. Said I’ve seemed distracted lately.” She tilted her head and looked behind herself, at Lance. “...He was right. I have been.”

Some of the tension in Keith’s shoulders relaxed.

At least he wasn’t really the only one.

“After you left, Lance and I became a great deal closer.” She drew her eyebrows closer. “I think, perhaps, between you being gone, Pidge and Hunk being so deeply in their own techy world so much of the time, Coran being more of a father figure, and Shiro...not quite being himself since you found him, we were both in need of a friend.”

Keith lowered his hand from Lance’s pod.

His icy handprint remained.

“I know the two of you were becoming closer as well,” continued Allura. “You were quite the unit, in battle and out of it, before…”

Keith sat on the steps beside her.

She warily met his eyes.

He looked at his knees. “...Do you think he knows?”

“Knows that we miss him, you mean?” asked Allura. She sighed and looked over her shoulder. “I certainly hope so, but…”

“But?”

Her eyes saddened. “...Wish-Walking isn’t generally something _happy_ people do.”

 

* * *

 

“Everyone ready to do this?”

“Roger that!”

“Absolutely!”

“Yes, sir!”

“I was born ready!”

“Then let’s go!”

Voltron formed like fire in friendship, like watering the roots of a new family, like all the firmness of earth holding up the sky.

It stood in the Arusian sunlight, fierce and strong and unbreakable.

And Allura cheered.

And Lance smiled.

They did it on their own this time.

 

* * *

 

“You’re sure you can’t detect anything?”

Coran stroked his mustache. “Afraid not, Princess. But the Lions are so much more than we can explain. Even your father failed to understand them completely, and he was the one who created them. There was always something greater about them, something above us, something more than he could ever comprehend. It’s entirely possible that some piece of Blaytz stayed behind, some echo of his consciousness that we can’t detect with Altean technology. Or…” He raised his eyebrows. “Or, if I might be permitted to be a little romantic, perhaps Blaytz himself simply wanted to make sure his successor got off on the right foot, and now that you have, he’s disappeared.” He crossed his arms and leaned his hips into the console. “Did you sense anything the second time you formed Voltron?”

“No,” admitted Allura. “Nor did I feel anything from any of the other Lions. No sign of Trigel or Gyrgan...or my father...”

“Well, there’s good news to be had in that,” said Coran. “At least that means Zarkon isn’t able to tamper with the Black Lion, then, right?”

“Perhaps not,” said Allura. “But…”

“But you miss them,” said Coran. “I know. As do I. But we have a new set of Paladins, now. Paladins who have very big shoes to fill. And you’re one of them. The only one of them who understood how it was before. They need your guidance.”

Allura took a breath. “You’re right.”

 

* * *

 

Shiro wasn’t sure what had happened at first. All he saw was dust, and all he felt was the earth quaking, Pidge quaking in his arms.

Then he heard the groaning of dense metal and a deep, warm growl.

He let go of Pidge, and he stood, breathless, all the air gone from his lungs the second he saw two magnificent ships looming over him.

No… They were more than ships.

“...The Lions just saved us,” whispered Shiro, stunned nearly speechless.

“I...guess that explains all the weird stuff with the Blue Lion,” uttered Pidge, clearly just as stunned.

Shiro frowned. Maybe, but...the only Lions that jumped in were the Black and Green Lions.

_Their_ Lions.

_So why did the Blue Lion—_

“Um— Shiro?!”

Shiro followed Pidge’s gaze behind him.

The sarcophagus-like structure parted into mechanical pieces, pieces that whirred as they fell away from the center, revealing something dark, something menacing, something…

_Big, Galra, and headed straight for us._

“Get in your Lion!”

 

* * *

 

The beast _exploded._

Debris scattered. The earth shook. Voltron’s sword sparked, lightning flashing up its blade.

Keith pulled his Bayard out of the console and smiled at it, as if it had done all the work.

“...Thanks, Red.”

Allura’s voice came over the coms. “Well done, Keith.”

Keith opened his mouth to respond, but before he got the chance, something else came over the coms from Allura’s helmet. Something faint. But Keith _swore_ he heard it.

It sounded like...a sigh.

A really heavy one, too.

Like the kind that broke out of Keith when he stared at the ceiling of his shack every morning when he woke up, knowing Shiro wasn’t there.

Depressed.

...Lonely.

“Did anyone else hear that?”

“What?!” squawked Hunk. “Is— Is there another one of those things coming? Is there a—”

“No,” said Keith. “Nothing like that. I just thought I heard…” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

 

* * *

 

Allura ran her fingertips along Blue’s console one last time and stepped out of the cockpit. She climbed down into Blue’s mouth and waited for her to open it, and once she did…

...Allura found someone waiting on the other side, looking very much like he’d gotten stuck with his hand caught in the cackilnek jar.

“Keith?” Allura stepped off the ramp. “Is everything all right?”

Keith averted his eyes. “I— Yeah, of course, I was just… Standing. In your bay. In front of your Lion.”

Allura raised an eyebrow. “...If there’s something bothering you—”

“There isn’t!” insisted Keith, too quick to not be suspicious.

“I...see.” Allura hummed. “Well… I’m going to let Blue leave her mouth open for a while. You know, in case anyone left anything in there on your ride over. Any lip balms or other trinkets they may have had floating in their pockets.” She clasped her hands behind her back. “You’re welcome to have a look around if you’d like.”

She walked past Keith, toward the bay doors.

They hadn’t even closed before she heard rushed footsteps clanking up a metal ramp.

 

* * *

 

“The crystal!”

Allura pushed past Coran, through the smoke, where the shattered pieces of what _had_ been the ship’s power source laid scattered about.

Coran hardly had time to put together what that meant before the Arusian King came huffing and puffing behind them.

“Lion Warriors! Our village is under attack! We need help!”

Keith turned to Shiro. “Let’s get to the Lions.”

“We can’t,” said Allura, defeated. “They’re sealed in the hangers. There’s no way to get them out.” Her shoulders sank. “We’re defenseless.”

“All right, now, nobody panic,” said Coran. “Things could be worse. At least none of us got caught up in the explosion.”

“Coran’s right,” said Shiro. “We all just need to take a deep breath and think about this.” He crossed his arms, a frown pinching his features. “If someone set up a bomb, that means this is most likely an attack, probably set up by the Galra. If the village has been attacked as well…”

“It’s a distraction,” said Pidge, sharp as a pin, as usual.

The Arusian King’s eyes darted around the six of them. “Will you not help us?!”

“No, no, don’t worry,” assured Hunk. “We’re gonna help you.” He turned to Shiro. “...We’re gonna help them, right?”

“Yes. We just need to think this through.” Shiro lifted his head. “Allura, Coran, see what you can do to help the Arusians. The threat’s probably going to be concentrated at the castle, so we need as many hands here as possible. But don’t be afraid to call for backup if it turns out we’re wrong.”

Coran nodded sharply. So did Allura.

“All right, Team Voltron.” Shiro raised his right arm, and his hand glowed through his armor. “Let’s show the Galra we’re more than just our Lions.”

 

* * *

 

Keith glared at the ceiling. It was dark. Cold. Defending the Castle of Lions had gone off without a hitch, but they still needed a Balmeran crystal, and someone needed to make sure Sendak didn’t wake up and do any real damage, so that meant he was stuck on guard duty with Shiro until everyone else got back.

At least Pidge had left the doors open. Maybe it was a stroke of luck he’d wanted to leave when he did.

Keith just...hoped he didn’t still want to leave after everything that had happened.

“You okay?”

Shiro sat down beside Keith, in front of Sendak, bound and still unconscious, but still a real threat.

“I know we haven’t had much of a chance to talk since we got to Arus. But you seem...distracted by something.” He nudged Keith’s shoulder with his own. “Maybe we should.”

Keith frowned. _Distracted._ That was a good way to put it.

“...You’d think I’m crazy.”

“If anyone’s crazy here, it’s me,” said Shiro, his voice kind, gentle, but...more self-degrading than Keith would have ever liked. “Zoning out in the middle of battle, even when it’s just training. Tensing up every time I hear footsteps coming down the hall. Forgetting things.”

“You can’t help that,” said Keith. “You’ve been through a lot. It makes sense. You’re not crazy.”

“And neither are you,” said Shiro. “Especially for trying to find answers for things we can’t explain.”

Keith turned his head so sharply his own hair nearly hit him in the eye.

Shiro just smiled. “The Blue Lion. That’s what’s bothering you, right?”

“I—” Keith sighed. “Yeah. But...that’s not all of it.”

Shiro held his expression neutral. Waiting. Patient.

“...I hear things,” said Keith. “Things no one else hears. And when I think about what I heard, it’s like… It’s like ‘heard’ isn’t the right word. It’s more like...I _felt_ it _._ Like when I felt the Blue Lion in the desert. And...I swear I see things, sometimes. Out of the corner of my eye. And then I look, and...nothing’s there.”

“Well, how long has this been going on?” asked Shiro.

“Since...everything with the Blue Lion started,” said Keith.

“You think they’re related?”

“When we formed Voltron,” said Keith, “there was _something else there._ Not just the five of us and our Lions. Something reached out to us when we all thought we were going to die, and it came _from_ the Blue Lion, but it wasn’t Allura. I _have_ to think it has something to do with the Blue Lion, because if it doesn’t, then that means I’m just…”

“ _Keith,_ ” supplied Shiro. “No matter what...you’re still just Keith. Just like I’m still Shiro, even though I have nightmares and can’t remember most of the last year of my life.” He clapped a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “I trust you. If you say there’s something strange going on with the Blue Lion, some...presence in the corner of your eye? Then I believe you.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I mean, we _have_ been flying around in giant, magical robot lions for the past couple of weeks. What’s weirder than _that?_ ”

Keith felt himself smile. “...Thanks, Shiro.”

“No problem.” Shiro dropped his hand. “Just…try to stay patient. Patience—”

“Yields focus,” said Keith. “Yeah. I got it.”

Shiro nodded. “Keep me updated, okay?”

“Sure.”

Keith just...hoped there were updates to make.

The sound of footsteps caught his ear and he looked to the open doors.

Allura and Coran came through, both heaving a crystal they struggled to carry, which, considering their impressive Altean strength, said a great deal about its weight.

They were followed a hair’s breadth away by Pidge, Hunk, and…

“Who’s this?” asked Shiro, climbing to his feet.

“Shay,” said Hunk. “She’s a Balmeran. She helped us escape from the Balmera with the crystal.”

“Only before _these ones_ helped _me_ escape,” said Shay.

“You wouldn’t have had to escape at all if you didn’t help us,” said Hunk. “We were just returning the favor.”

Pidge looked to Shiro, hopefully. “The Balmera was overrun with Galra. We’re helping them, right?”

Shiro just shrugged. “Looks like we don’t have a choice.”

 

* * *

 

“After all your help between the castle and the Balmera, I can’t help but feel that you were meant to be a part of our team, but I understand if you want to leave.”

Pidge shied under Shiro’s stern but kind gaze.

“...Dad used to tell me how close he was with his crew members.” Pidge’s eyes darted from Shiro to Keith to Allura. “They were like family.”

Shiro smiled.

So did Pidge.

“Now I understand what he was talking about. I’m staying with you guys. Let’s stop Zarkon for all of our families.”

“Good to have you back on the team,” said Keith, his voice softer, kinder, more relieved than Pidge had expected.

Shiro turned to leave the engine room, and Keith and Allura made to follow him.

Pidge’s heart lurched. “Um, there’s one more—”

The three of them stopped.

Looked.

Pidge swallowed.

“...Never mind.”

He… _He..._ shrugged.

“It’s nothing.”

 

* * *

 

Rolo whistled low. “Now _that_ is impressive. And I’m not just talking about the arm.”

“What? Oh.” Shiro felt heat crawl up his neck. It hadn’t struck him he’d basically stripped from the waist up until he noticed Rolo looking at more than just his arm. “Most of this is...a side effect from fighting in Zarkon’s arena.” He cleared his throat and held out his hand. “But that’s not important. You wanted to see my—”

“Yeah.” Rolo reached for Shiro’s prosthetic and slid his hand along the metal. His hand was...warm. Shiro could feel it. He’d...never expected to feel such a gentle touch on that arm. No one had touched him like that in a long, long time. “So. Galra tech, huh? Must have been pretty terrible.”

“I wouldn’t be able to tell you,” said Shiro. “I can’t remember...any of it.”

Something in Rolo’s expression pinched. “...Must have been _really_ terrible, then. I, uh… I’m sorry that happened to you.”

His attention slid from Shiro’s arm to his chest to his eyes.

Shiro swallowed.

No one had _looked_ at him like that in a long time, either. Even when he and Adam were together, things had been so rocky between them for so long… He forgot how it felt.

One of Rolo’s hands wrapped around the back of his neck to coax him closer.

“Hey… C’mere.”

His other hand reached up and pushed his helmet back, over the crown of his head. It landed unceremoniously on the earth behind him.

Shiro’s mouth went dry. “Rolo… Rolo, what…”

“Shh…” Rolo leaned in close.

His eyes closed.

Shiro swallowed. His heart thundered in his chest.

Rolo slid his hand up Shiro’s left arm...and he twisted it.

What Shiro didn’t realize at first was that he twisted back.

When he found himself again, he was hyperventilating, his knee digging into Rolo’s back, pinning him to the ground.

“Cool it, cool it, cool it! You got me, all right?! I’m sorry! Let go of my arm before you pull it out of socket, would ya?”

Silent, Shiro eased up his hold on Rolo’s arm, but he didn’t let go.

Rolo sighed, relieved, but...something else, too.

He turned his head and looked at Shiro through the corner of his eye.

“Look, I… I really am sorry. Nyma and me, we… We’re kind of up against a wall. The Empire’s gunning for us and we’re just… We’re looking for a way to at least get the ‘dead’ off the ‘wanted, dead or alive’ posters, you know? Your Lion was just a way for us to save our skins. If it wasn’t for that, I would’ve never… I’m sorry.”

Shiro swallowed, mouth dry for an entirely different reason now. It felt as though a hand had wrapped around his throat and started squeezing.

He reached for his helmet with the hand that didn’t have Rolo’s arm folded behind his shoulders.

“...Paladins, I need backup.” He swallowed again. “Rolo just tried to steal the Black Lion.”

Rolo turned away.

Shiro almost felt bad for him.

He could feel the guilt coming off in waves.

But guilt didn't change what he did.

 

* * *

 

“Shiro…” Allura set a gentle hand on their Black Paladin’s trembling shoulder. “Shiro, are you all right?”

Shiro nodded, but the pallor in his face said otherwise.

Allura knitted her brow.

“...The way he grabbed me,” said Shiro. “It was like… I-I don’t know, but it was familiar. Something the Galra must have done to me, I—”

“You’re safe now,” whispered Allura. “Rolo’s gone. And there are no Galra here. Just some humans, a couple of Alteans, and a Balmeran.”

“We’re headed for an invaded planet,” said Shiro faintly.

“I know,” said Allura. “But the Black Lion will keep you safe. And so will all of us. We’re the wielders of the keenest sword in the known universe. What happened to you before… It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Shiro nodded, but he still seemed unconvinced.

Allura pursed her lips. “...Would...Would you like a hug?”

Shiro finally met her eyes, his own welling with tears.

“Please,” he rasped.

Allura pulled Shiro close, and he returned the embrace, holding her as tight as he could without harming her. Like he was going to collapse and the only thing keeping him upright was Allura.

Allura closed her eyes and rested her cheek on Shiro’s shoulder, mourning whatever awful things must have happened to him.

After what happened to Allura’s people, after what happened to that poor Balmera, after what happened to Shiro...she swore no Galra would see mercy ever again.

 

* * *

 

“What do you mean you _can’t read Galra?_ ”

“I’m an _Altean!_ ”

“But you’re a princess!” snapped Keith. “From a planet of ambassadors!”

“Yes, but I’m not _all-knowing!_ ” Allura clicked her tongue. “Languages do tend to develop over thousands of years, you know! Keith, will you _please_ guard the windows while I figure this out?!”

Keith sighed, heated, and made his way to the window.

And he listened.

Allura groaned, huffed, sighed, warily hit one button, then another.

Keith exhaled sharply through his teeth.

“Just— Let me try!”

Frustrated, Allura inched to the side and gestured to the console. “Please, by all means, if you can figure it out when I can’t…”

Keith scanned the screens, frowned, narrowed his eyes, and pressed his hand to something that looked vaguely like a handprint.

The doors they were trying to close immediately began to shut.

Allura’s brow knitted.

She looked from the doors to Keith’s face, something stirring in her eyes, something that made Keith’s stomach lurch.

“...We need to meet back up with the others.”

Allura closed her eyes, as if thinking, then stood from where she had kneeled.

“Of course.”

 

* * *

 

“Keith, try to draw its fire! I’m coming in from above!”

“Roger!”

Shiro dove for the beast while Keith distracted it with a heat ray.

Or...that was the intention.

A single green eye swiveled to the back of the beast’s head and…

And Shiro’s heart lurched.

Then his Lion did.

A chorus of concerned voices cried out his name as he hit the dirt.

He groaned, head spinning, and barely registered Pidge flying in to shield him.

“Coran,” he grunted. “Coran… Pull back.”

“What?! But—”

“We’re...retreating,” hissed Shiro. “We can’t hold out against this thing. No choice.”

“Shiro,” said Allura gently, “you don’t sound—”

“I’ll be fine.” Shiro closed his eyes and took a sharp breath through his nose. “Lions...get to the mineshafts. It...shouldn’t be able to reach us there.”

Black stood on legs as shaky as Shiro’s mind.

He should have been able to avoid that laser, but he was still sensitive, still exhausted, still sluggish.

_If it wasn’t for that panic attack..._

 

* * *

 

“I’ll escort them out.”

“What?!” Coran screeched in Allura’s earpiece. “Princess, no! It’s too dangerous!”

“Yeah,” said Hunk, “and what if we need Voltron and you’re not there?”

“Someone has to be there to lead these people out,” said Allura. “Right now, that’s more helpful than Voltron.”

“And if it turns out we need Voltron more?” asked Pidge.

“Then, well…” Allura sighed. “Perhaps we’ll get lucky again.”

Shiro and Keith exchanged a look, one that had Allura’s eyes narrowing in suspicion once more.

“All I need is for the four of you to focus on keeping the creature distracted,” she said, looking in any direction but Keith’s. “Everything else should be my problem to worry about.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you remember how Voltron formed that sword with Keith’s Bayard? I think the Lion’s telling me I can do the same thing with my Bayard!”

“Are you _sure?_ ”

“Let’s find out!” Hunk raised his Bayard. “ _Form thingie!_ ”

He pushed his Bayard into the console like a key and turned it.

Nothing happened.

“...It didn’t work!”

“Because we can’t form Voltron without Allura!” came Shiro’s voice.

Hunk flushed. “Oh! Right! Yeah, I know!”

“Not unless…”

“Unless what?” Hunk pulled his Bayard back. “What’s goin’ on, Keith?”

“...Nothing.” Keith sighed over the comms. “It’s...nothing.”

“Just keep distracting that beast!” commanded Shiro. “If… If anything changes, we’ll worry about that when it does.”

Hunk dropped his Bayard and gripped the controls.

They wove and dashed and rushed across the surface of the Balmera, keeping the beast distracted until Shiro’s voice came across again.

“Guys, look!”

Hunk looked.

A wave of brilliant, blue light spread across the surface beneath his Lion, healing the Balmera, restoring its life.

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Great, can we form Voltron now?”

“I don’t think so,” came Pidge’s voice. “Allura looks pretty beat.”

“So what do we do about the _monster?_ ” demanded Hunk. “We can’t hold it off forever!”

“We don’t have to,” breathed Keith.

“Why?” asked Hunk. “Why n—?”

All the air rushed out of Hunk’s lungs as the Balmera answered his question.

Crystals spread across its surface, shooting out of its petrified body one by one by one until they reached the beast itself.

They shot up around its feet, trapping it in place, growing higher and greater and taller and bigger until…

...until the beast was completely encapsulated.

Trapped permanently in Balmeran crystals like an insect preserved in acrylic.

A wave of cheers ripped through the comms. Hunk laughed, breathless in relief, and pressed his forehead to the back of his own hand.

“ _Man,_ hahah… We didn’t even need Voltron! How about that?”

 

* * *

 

The Gladiator hit the floor with a metallic clang.

Keith stood up straight and tugged on the front of his shirt, peeling it away from his sweat-slicked skin.

“End training sequence.”

The Gladiator’s central eye and the design on its chest simultaneously ceased to glow. It laid limp on the ground.

Keith, panting, lowered himself to the floor. With a loud, exhausted sigh, he fell back, and his shoulders flattened against the cool steel.

He closed his eyes as his body fought to reclaim the oxygen he’d lost.

It was only a matter of time before Shiro came to get him. He’d been worried lately. Keith couldn’t blame him. He almost worried himself.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about that weird presence unless he had something else to worry about. A mission, training, _something._ He couldn’t afford to sit still. Not unless he wanted to start obsessing.

Curiosity. That’s all it was. But curiosity was powerful. He wanted... _needed_ to know what it was that he felt. Whether it was benevolent or malevolent, whether it was just observing or actually had an effect on the Paladins.

Whether it really was piloting the Blue Lion in times of trouble.

What it meant if it was.

Keith let go of his Bayard. It toppled out of his hand with a gentle clatter.

The first time they formed Voltron. That was when Keith had felt it the most. Or at least _thought_ he felt it, if there really was anything to feel.

The presence had seemed so...desperate. Like it was scared. Like… Like it didn’t want anything to happen to the Paladins.

As if, should something happen to the Paladins, something bad would have happened to it as well.

...Maybe it was the spirit of Voltron itself? The whole of it?

But… No, it seemed too closely tied to the Blue Lion in particular.

Though the Red Lion did still respond to it. Keith felt something like...familiarity through Red. Like...somewhere between a pet happy to see its master and a parent happy to see their child. As if something had been out of place and the presence had put it back.

Had all the Lions reacted like that? Maybe the other Paladins just didn’t notice.

...No. Shiro would have noticed. He was closer to his Lion than anyone else. And he would have said something, Keith was sure.

So if it wasn’t Voltron, then what—

_What’s behind me right now?_

Keith’s eyes snapped open.

He shot upright and turned around, toward where the top of his head had just been.

Nothing there. Of course there was nothing there. Nothing ever was.

But…

Keith climbed to his feet.

What if there _was_ something? What if he was just trying to detect it with the wrong senses? What if…?

_Patience yields focus._ Shiro had told him that. It brought him to the Red Lion. And he’d been able to sense the Blue Lion’s energy out in the middle of the desert.

If he could sense the Blue Lion, even though it hadn’t been his Lion, then...what if he could sense something else?

“‘Patience yields focus…’”

Keith took a deep breath.

He closed his eyes.

And instead of searching for something in the room with him, he simply...absorbed the room itself.

He could imagine, in his mind’s eye, where everything was.

His Bayard lying untouched by his knee a few inches away.

The Gladiator behind him, immobile.

The round, cornerless walls all around him.

The observation room overhead.

The path of the blue and white lines that kept the training room lit.

The hatch overhead.

And...something at the end of the room.

Something like a magnet. Tugging. Pulling.

Keith couldn’t see it in his mind’s eye. It wasn’t like his connection to Red. But it was still...something.

Like with the Blue Lion. _Some energy telling him to search._

_Begging_ him to search.

Practically _screaming._

And Keith, despite knowing there wouldn’t be anything there when he opened his eyes, despite feeling absolutely ridiculous, wanted _so badly_ to answer the call.

His feet, as if of their own volition, took a shuffling, uncertain step forward. Then another, more confident step. Then another.

He reached out, fingers twitching, half-groping the air, as if there was something to grab, as if he could just...tear something solid out from between the oxygen and the carbon dioxide and whatever Altean compounds might be floating into his chest.

The presence felt so far away, worlds away, timelines and realities and dimensions away, but at the same time...it felt so _close._ Just out of Keith’s grasp.

As if he just… If he could just...reach out...an inch further...then maybe—

“Paladins!”

A loud, piercing alarm came over the intercom, and just like that, whatever connection Keith had built faded away, dissipated like smoke in the air.

It was gone.

“Zarkon’s attacking! Come to the bridge immediately!”

Roaring in frustration, Keith ducked down and grabbed his Bayard.

“ _Stupid drills…_ ”

 

* * *

 

Lance grabbed a fistful of his jeans at the knee. He pressed his forehead harder into the back of his arms. He sniffed.

He’d stopped bothering to watch the retelling of his memories sometime around when Nyma would have stolen the Blue Lion.

When Rolo tried to seduce Shiro instead and Shiro handled it like a pro.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Any time a problem cropped up due to Lance’s absence, the Paladins found a way around it. And Lance being gone fixed more problems than it caused.

Shay was never captured.

Shiro never got hurt protecting Lance from Sendak.

Lance never did his stupid kick against their first Robeast, so the battle didn’t last as long.

And Allura was a better Blue Paladin than Lance ever was. She never got in stupid fights with Keith or rammed Blue headfirst into the sand or let anyone fall in training exercises or...any of the stupid things Lance did.

As soon as everyone was on Arus...as soon as they had all settled in as a team...they were always better off without him.

Like he knew they were.

Like he’d always known they were.

Lance wasn’t even sure why he was sitting at the end of the hall where he’d seen Alfor’s hologram. Maybe just so he could see that nothing would happen.

Because he hadn’t been crying like a baby in the engine room.

Because he’d never gotten blown up.

Because four Paladins had been more than enough to keep Sendak out of the castle.

Because Sendak never hooked that stupid Galra crystal up to the ship.

Because there was no Galra crystal messing with the stupid mechanics.

Because _everything that went wrong was always Lance’s fault and he wasn’t there to ruin things anymore._

_SHUNK_

_SHUNK_

_SHUNK_

Lance lifted his head. “...What?”

_SHUNK_

_SHUNK_

His eyes widened. He sucked in a breath.

“Wh— How? _Why?!_ ”

_SHUNK_

One by one, echoing as if someone had thrown down an enormous, metal switch for each of them…

_SHUNK_

The blue lights that lined up along the corridor walls… Every single one of them…

_...SHUNNNNNK…_

They died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'm still sick. Have another chapter.


End file.
